Time slots, hand sanitiser dispensers, one-way systems, online booking, cashless payments: these measures were quickly established as essential for a safe visit in the time of coronavirus, but they’re just so … dull.
What else can you do to make sure your visitors have a memorable experience that they’ll want to shout about, even during a global pandemic?
The answer is: plenty, but it’s difficult to predict which modifications are worth investing in. Invest too little and visitors won’t feel safe, putting the kibosh on a memorable visitor experience before it’s even had the chance to start. Invest too much in the wrong sort of changes, and you run the risk of overspending on new additions and alterations that are redundant once the danger has passed.
To help you consider your options, here are 5 digital and technical innovations that can improve your attraction’s visitor experience – now and in the future.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
Whether you like it or not, TripAdvisor is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to growing your attraction’s online visibility and visitor confidence.
TripAdvisor is the world’s largest travel platform. As of 2020, there were approximately 884 million reviews on the site. Pre-Covid, average monthly unique visitors stood at 463 million – that’s 463 million people planning and booking their next trip on its pages every month.
It’s a busy and influential marketplace, and your visitor attraction is missing a trick if it doesn’t already engage with it. The higher your attraction ranks on TripAdvisor, the more likely it is that users will spot it when they’re researching their next trip.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
An effective brand story does more than simply communicate the origins of your visitor attraction. In fact, that doesn’t even have to come into it. Instead, an effective brand story tells people about your ‘why’.
Your ‘why’ – your purpose – is harder to understand than your attraction’s ‘how’ and ‘what’. Your ‘why’ is what differentiates you and what people will relate to, if it’s communicated to them effectively. It should be real, thoughtful and memorable.
A well-written brand story can elevate your visitor attraction into a brand that people notice and want to engage with. It’s one of your most powerful marketing tools, creating trust, advocacy and a framework for every aspect of your visitor attraction, from content planning to welcome.
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- Visitor Attractions
The “travel day of action” on Wednesday 23 June was an uplifting sight. Regardless of how much the events influence the UK government’s next moves in supporting international travel and the thousands of tourism businesses left on the brink by the pandemic, the protests were a show of unity among the UK travel industry.
Inspired by the protests, we’ve compiled a list of some of the people driving the organisations and movements that affect everyone in tourism and the visitor attractions sector, from sustainability and racial diversity to policy.
If you want to be the first to hear the news and give your visitor attraction’s voice a greater chance of being heard, start engaging with these 5 industry thought leaders and influencers.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
Once you understand the principles of experiential tourism, you can create visitor experiences that create longer-lasting, more meaningful memories, and help increase your visitor attraction’s bottom line.
Experiential tourism has been on the rise for some time now, as visitors demand more authentic and engaging travel experiences – and interest shows no sign of waning as we move past the pandemic.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
Days out are top of the list for things to do on Father’s Day. But this year, uncertainty and nervousness around Covid-19 guidance may mean that more families than usual have left their Father’s Day plans to the last minute.
If your attraction still has availability on Sunday 20 June 2021, or you were more restrained than usual in planning and promoting your Father’s Day activities, you might want a few ideas to help your visitor attraction stand out to last-minute planners. We’ve got your back!
Here are 5 ideas to inspire families waiting until the eleventh hour to choose your visitor attraction for their Father’s Day fun. They’re all relatively easy to set up and will look great in your Father’s Day marketing activity.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
Content that entertains or informs is an important part of your social media strategy. It helps keep your audience engaged, so they stick around to see the content that directly markets your visitor attraction.
Planning this type of content can be time-consuming though. To save you time and help your visitor attraction maintain a steady flow of relevant, engaging content that doesn’t come across as overly self-promoting, we’ve combed through the calendar for you.
We’ve included campaigns that require a little more involvement from the wider VA team, opportunities to support other businesses and simple additions that won’t take up more than a few minutes of your time. By piggybacking on these campaigns, you can amplify your social reach and inject some variety into your social media. We’ve also included relevant hashtags to save you even more time.
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- Visitor Attractions
The cycling industry was already thriving but the pandemic saw interest in it boom. Bike shops even reported running out of stock. The trend was – and still is – visible across the UK, Europe and the States but unlike other lockdown hobbies, such as baking sourdough, knitting and jigsaw puzzles, it looks like cycling is here to stay.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
The coming week brings with it the International Day of Families, International Museum Day and the re-opening of indoor attractions in England. It feels like an opportune time to consider what museums and heritage sites can do to make families feel more welcome.
To find out more about the barriers to visits faced by families and how museums can help overcome them, we spoke to Kids in Museums’ Executive Director, Alison Bowyer.
Kids in Museums works with museums, heritage sites and cultural organisations across the UK to make them more welcoming for children, young people and families. Their website is packed with programmes and practical advice on making your museum more accessible and family friendly, including useful guidance on how to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement, how you can use TikTok and a series of insightful case studies. But if you only do one thing, read their Manifesto. It lays out what children, young people and families think makes somewhere a great place to visit.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
Is your attraction’s events calendar looking a bit thin on the ground after months of uncertainty? It’s understandable – and sensible – if you’ve delayed making decisions about whether to hold events at your attraction this year. But now that the roadmap out of lockdown looks like it’s going to plan, you might want to think about ways to fill those dates in the diary.
Thanks to the last-minute nature of the lifting of Covid restrictions and the ever-present risk of a third wave and eleventh-hour changes to government guidelines, planning times for events are shorter than ever. And while visitors are excited about the return of events, they’re wary too.
Pop-ups could be your attraction’s answer to easing back into live events.
- Topic:
- Visitor Attractions
