How Real-Time Guest and Venue Data Can Benefit Your Amusement Park
Standing at the window of your office mid-Saturday, you look across your water park and admire the sunny weather. You can see many guests rolling in through the turnstiles while a few drag their kids out. You can see others lining up for the most popular rides. You can see some munching hot dogs.
You are an experienced park operator; you can tell a lot just by looking out the window.
But do you know exactly how many people are in your park at this very moment? Do you know if guests are waiting longer than average for that ride? Do you know if they would have bought ice cream to go with the hot dog if only you had offered a discount to the right customers?
And why does this all matter to your bottom line?
Here are 4 things you can’t measure by looking out your window, and how true, real-time data could help increase profits and cut costs.
Real-Time Attendance
Insight: While looking out the window, you might estimate that you have 600 guests in your park right now. What if you found out that the actual number of guests on site is 857? Or 481?
Action: Re-allocate resources with confidence to prevent understaffing or overstaffing. You can adjust inventory to avoid selling out of pretzels by 1pm, or offer discount combos to avoid throwing out buckets of salad when the sun goes down.
Insight: With real-time guest data, you can also tell precisely when people came into your park and when they left. Over time, you can view trends to see the exact hour when more guests leave than come on a day like this.
Action: At this crossover point, offer happy hour or live entertainment so guests stay to eat and drink at your park instead of leaving to go to that burger joint down the road.
Attraction Throughput
Insight: See the hourly capacity of your attractions in real time. Receive a notification if the numbers fall below a threshold.
Action: Find out why, and rectify the issue if necessary. Maybe the employee at the attraction is having problems dispatching faster, and they need help. Or, if this line is too short and lines at other attractions are too long, you can incentivize guests through loyalty points and perks to come to this ride instead.
Real-Time Revenue
Insight: See what you have earned in real-time up to the present moment and if you are on track to achieve the daily revenue target.
Action: If at midday it looks like you might not reach your target by closing time, you can proactively engage in tactics to raise sales, for example, by making and communicating last minute offers.
Guest Preferences
Insight: At the till, the computer system will tell you what kind of guest is standing in front of you—what demographic, what they previously did at the park, and what kind of ticket they have, e.g. a season pass.
Action: When a guest has ordered something, you can upsell them something else that they likely would want to have according to their demographic profile—for example, a 20% discount on the ice cream to go with the full price hot dog, or a 20% discount on the kombucha to go with the full price avocado salad.
We can go on and on about things you can’t tell by looking out the window. By connecting systems across your park to gather eye-opening real-time data in your park, you can be proactive and engage in tactics to capture revenue opportunities and optimize operations.
Just ask Vantage how to unleash the potential of your park this season.
We’ve been exploring the concepts of digital transformation in recent blog articles. You can find more articles on our Resources Page.
