What have visitor attractions learned from 2020?
There are many words we could use to describe 2020. Unprecedented. Challenging. Exhausting. But for now, let’s go with ‘An education’.
The year started with cheerful predictions for the rise of wellness, bleisure (a blend of business and leisure), long-term and pet-centric travel, as well as more holidays for kids travelling with grandparents. Significant growths in the use of VR, AI and the personalisation of the visitor experience were also projected.
Then the pandemic came along, putting the kibosh on so many of these projections while accelerating others. In 2020, Covid-19 didn’t so much re-write the tourism industry rule book as toss it out of the window.
Never have visitor attractions come up against such a relentless list of challenges: enforced closures; record numbers of no-shows and last-minute cancellations; high levels of staff absence and anxiousness; the overnight disappearance of the international visitor market; the imposition of expensive but wholly necessary health and cleaning measures; and the need for more investment in digital marketing, to name a few.
And yet. And yet. Among the bombardment of challenges and frustrations, there were opportunities to learn, grow and make positive changes for a better future.
Prioritise agility, diversity and resilience
Agility, diversity and resilience stand out among 2020’s legion of buzzwords. As obstacle after obstacle was thrown at us, we learned to pivot our systems and strategies and to diversify our revenue streams to survive.
If there was an award for Most Agile VA of 2020, it would surely go to Tulleys Farm. Unable to run its usual escape rooms and large-scale seasonal events, Tulleys launched online strategy games, a drive-in cinema diner and, as early as March 2020, reinstated its old farm shop as a drive-through. Part of what makes Tulleys so agile is the creativity of its team, the openness of senior management to ideas from all staff members, and a dynamic approach to problem solving.
Acknowledge problematic pasts
Black Lives Matter, meanwhile, helped highlight the problematic heritage of many historic properties, collections and exhibits. The protests sparked by George Floyd’s death prompted the National Trust to bring forward projects that address the links between some of its locations and the colonialism and historic slavery that helped fund them, although the move hasn’t been without its critics.
It’s part of a growing body of work on decolonialisation and past abuses across the heritage sector, which learned that it must face some awkward questions as it tries to keep pace with the ever-moving expectations of society.
Digital matters
Social media and digital marketing surged to the fore in 2020. With gates closed, it was the only way many attractions could reach visitors for a significant amount of 2020. Virtual visits, online lectures and digital tours became almost as important to attractions as IRL visits and events had been pre-pandemic.
We learned the value of a strong digital presence, from keeping visitors interested through quirky social media successes to effective crowdfunding campaigns. Plus, digital marketing proved more flexible and cheaper compared with other marketing avenues, particularly with the last-minute changes that became the norm.
Value community
Time and time again, survival came back to community: staff and volunteer communities, local communities and wider networks of VAs.
Attractions tended to fare better when they dipped into the wealth of experience that their teams could offer. At Chester Zoo, office staff helped welcome visitors and enforce social distancing. On-site staff at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust fed content to digital marketing teams, helping to keep visitors interested and donations trickling in.
Tulleys Farm’s innovations helped its local community by keeping staff employed, facilitating local access to local producers and entertaining people who lived nearby throughout a tough year. Building a loyal local audience has never been more important to an attraction’s survival.
Attractions across the UK have noted growing interest in volunteering and memberships as local and domestic visitors rallied to support their most-loved places. Caroline Sanger-Davies, Director of Marketing at Chester Zoo, says that, after lockdown, “many more visits to the zoo were motivated by people wanting to help us by visiting. This also extended into purchases of adoptions and memberships, and more recently from our freshly-launched online gift shop.”
Just as visitors rallied around their favourite places, so attractions rallied around each other. VAs came together to share best practice and learnings and build new visitor experiences in the hope of rebuilding the industry in a way that’s better for local communities, staff and visitors.
Long-term lessons
All of these elements add up to greater resilience for visitor attractions, and the wider travel industry, strengthening us all as 2020 turns to 2021, bringing with it Brexit and the potential for further disruption to the UK’s tourism industry.
Before the pandemic, many in the tourism industry were focused on visitor numbers as the measure of success. If the year-on-year figure didn’t grow, it was a fail. The downfall of this approach was becoming apparent even before the pandemic, with destinations such as Amsterdam and Venice – both victims of their own brilliant marketability – suffering from overtourism, which negatively affected the experience of residents and visitors alike.
The extended fallow periods of 2020 gave many of us the time to ask ourselves, ‘Is there another, better way?’ Of course, the answer is a resounding, ‘Yes’. We may not know the details of what that new way looks like just yet – the words community, inclusivity, sustainability and resilience keep coming up – but if 2020 taught us one thing, it’s that we are strong and if we continue to work together, the solutions will come.
