First of all you need to define success.
What does a successful theme park look like? Maybe you want to measure success on your theme park ticketing sales or your volume of visitor footfall. Both of these will help you measure your success but what helps these numbers to grow? How do you sell more tickets or how do you increase your return visitor numbers?
It starts with a sale.
You can sell your theme park tickets both online through your online booking system or at your theme park entrance through your EPOS theme park ticketing software. Whichever way your visitor decides to buy their ticket, it is usually their first encounter with your park. This is the perfect opportunity to make a good impression. No one likes difficult to use online ticket buying software or long queues at the entrance to purchase their day tickets. Make their experience as easy and simple to use as possible. On your website ticketing software, make sure you have simple steps that make purchasing a ticket easy to do – such as 3 simple steps that don’t ping the user off to a different looking website or make if difficult to navigate between purchasing screens. Online ticketing can be a nightmare if set up wrong and this is exactly what you want to avoid. In the same instance, no one wants to start their fun theme park day out waiting in long entrance queues. Fast, reliable epos and ticketing solutions mean that staff can easily capture any data they need and sell tickets quickly, keeping your queues short and visitors happy.
So theme park visitors have purchased their tickets and they’re inside your attraction, what next?
Understanding how your visitors navigate your attraction is key, what service do they expect at every point of their day? The key to theme park success is speed of service. If your visitor has made the effort to visit your attraction in their leisure time they want to make the most of it. We know they will have expectations of some queues such as for rides, that is to be expected, particularly on the popular ones, but that means they have very little time or patience to queue at other points around your park. Gift shops, souvenir outlets and in-ride photo counters might just be some of the areas that can get busy very quickly if you’re not careful. Keeping queues short at all of your retail outlets means that your visitors can purchase their souvenirs and continue their day with very little inconvenience. That means you have to have a reliable and fast EPOS solution in place at your theme park. Simple to use menus can help your staff find items quickly, barcoding stock means they can search for items across the park and know exactly where stock can be found. Never run out of stock in any of your outlets and avoid disappointed visitors with low stock automatic re-ordering solutions. Smart EPOS and stock control for your theme park can help with the success of visitor experience and help maintain visitor loyalty.
Theme park management systems can help you to connect your service levels across your park and provide reliable, fast service at every point of sale.
Food and catering outlets are no different. Your visitors will no doubt get hungry throughout their time at your attraction and visit one of your catering outlets. Each outlet should have the reliable EPOS solutions required for their type of service to ensure customer service is at the forefront. For example, large fast food type outlets could have self service kiosks where visitors can order on a touch screen device, pay and collect their food quickly. These types of outlets are most suited to thrill seekers who don’t want to waste any time and eating is purely a necessary evil. Fast service here is key, by using self service kiosks to order food, your team can have their full focus on getting orders out quickly and correctly. Other outlets may be more suited to tablet epos, for example pop up stalls for hotdogs, burgers, ice-creams or coffees. These outlets need a simple menu design with add ons for extras such as extra shot of coffee or syrup flavours. Tablet epos also means you don’t have to be static, you can move it around your park as needed. For example on a hot day, take a spare EPOS tablet out with some ice-creams and sell them around your park to passers by. Other outlets may be better suited to table number service or app ordering, your team could take orders at your point of sale and send them straight to the kitchen or food prep area, with kitchen printing, so your customer feels they are being served quickly and food can be delivered to them. The key point is knowing that all visitors will not be the same and therefore all elements of service must cater to them to keep them happy.
How do you measure a successful day out?
So your theme park visitor has had a great day out, every touchpoint with your and your team has been pleasant and service has been efficient thanks to a reliable EPOS solution built for your theme park. At this point, turn to your reporting, how many visitors whilst in your park paid for extra experiences, do you have a way to capture that feedback? How do you manage loyalty, their experience with you might not end when they leave your park, do they tag you in photos on social media or engage with emails you send them through your marketing schemes. Ultimately once a visitor has enjoyed their experience with you and keep coming back, surely that is the measure of a successful theme park. Your interaction at every point with a visitor makes an impression, help make the right impression with a theme park management and EPOS system you can rely on.
To find out more about what VisiSoft can do for your theme park have a read here or book a free demo of our software!
