When a recognised board game becomes an edition designed entirely around a destination, its price can no longer be compared mechanically with that of the original. Personalisation, exclusivity, play value and emotional value combine to create a different product.

In that context, selling a custom game at around 50% above the standard edition is not an unreasonable proposition. The premium can even prove relatively conservative.

The original product is not always the right price comparison

The calculation seems straightforward: a game costs €12 at retail, its custom edition is priced at €18, so it costs 50% more.

Mathematically, that is correct. Commercially, the comparison is far less obvious.

The visitor is not simply buying the same game with a logo added to it. They are discovering an edition they cannot find anywhere else, created around the place they are visiting and capable of bringing part of that experience back to life once they return home.

The product has changed. So has its value reference point.

What the British Museum shop can teach us

The British Museum provides a particularly useful illustration.

At the time of writing, its shop offers a cotton tote featuring the Museum’s façade for £3.99.

Within the same broad product category, an exclusive tote designed by illustrator Josie Shenoy sells for £14.99. An exclusive Smurfs and Bastet edition, combining the characters with an icon from the Museum’s collection, reaches £18.99.

The three products are not identical: design, materials and finish vary. This is not a controlled experiment that allows the price difference to be attributed to a single factor.

But as a retail example it is revealing. There is no single “price of a tote bag”. There is a price for a functional object, and another for an object that is designed, exclusive, story-rich and connected to a cultural experience.

Within the same family of objects, perceived value can change dramatically. Why should a game be any different?

Personalisation can create far more than a few percentage points of value

Academic research points in the same direction.

Franke and Piller studied willingness to pay for watches customised by their users. In their experiments, the value attributed to customised watches was on average 100% higher than for standard watches of comparable technical quality. The study was published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management .

That does not mean every personalised product can automatically double its price. It shows something more useful: when personalisation creates genuine value for the owner, an acceptable premium can be far from marginal.

Tourism provides an especially favourable context for that mechanism.

A 2024 study published in the Journal of Destination Marketing & Management found that novel designs for tourism cultural and creative products increase visitors’ willingness to pay a premium. The researchers identify two important mechanisms in particular: perceived innovation and perceived cultural value.

In other words, exactly what separates a generic product carrying a destination logo from a product genuinely designed for that destination.

A custom game combines several sources of value

With a Better Journey game, personalisation does not stop at the packaging. The box, illustrations, places, characters and other elements can all be reinterpreted around the destination. Visitors encounter their trip again in the games they play later.

Most importantly, the product retains its primary function: it is a genuine board game.

Play value A published, proven game system selected for the audience it needs to reach.
Creative value A deeply customised edition that goes far beyond adding a logo.
Emotional value A souvenir able to reactivate memories of the destination experience.
Exclusivity value A product specific to the place visited and difficult to compare directly with a standard edition.

A magnet is essentially a souvenir. A game is essentially a leisure product. A custom destination game can be both.

That dual purpose naturally changes what a visitor may be willing to pay for it.

The souvenir itself has economic value

Research into tourism souvenirs also shows that their value is not determined solely by practical utility.

Emotion, authenticity, symbolic value and the ability to bring memories of a trip back to mind all contribute to the value visitors attach to an object. These mechanisms have been examined in research on the perceived value of tourism souvenirs.

With a game, that dimension becomes particularly interesting: the souvenir is not merely looked at. It is used again.

A new game can put the destination back at the centre of a conversation months after the trip: “Remember? We bought this game there.” At that moment, the box is no longer simply merchandise. It becomes a memory trigger and an extension of the tourism experience.

So, is +50% a lot?

Not necessarily.

For a standard product with little more than a logo added, a 50% premium would probably be difficult to justify.

But that is not the Better Journey model.

When a game combines proven gameplay, an official licence, destination-specific artwork, exclusive distribution and the emotional value of a souvenir, a price around 50% above the original game becomes entirely credible.

Commercial examples and the available research also show why +50% should not be treated as a theoretical ceiling on the value that successful personalisation can create.

The aim is not to take the price of a game and arbitrarily add 50%. It is to create a product that is different, desirable and exclusive enough for its own price to feel natural.

The better question is probably not “What does the original game cost?” but “What is a genuine game worth to a family when they can only find it here — and it can bring part of their holiday back to life for years?”

That is the question Better Journey uses to shape the format, depth of personalisation and price positioning of each project.