Streamlining the Guest Experience through Operational Considerations in Design
This article, written by Rosie Willoughby, summarises the content of Coen Bertens’ NextGen Showcase presentation on Operational Considerations in Design, from 11th March 2024.
This educational session was brought to us by Coen Bertens of Tourist Destinations and Attractions Consultancy. During the session, Coen gave us a roadmap to successful operations through considering issues such as capacity and infrastructure in the design process.
Coen Bertens, formerly Park Director at Efteling, founded Tourist Destinations and Attractions Consultancy (TDAC) in 2020, aiming to support hospitality in the Netherlands. Working as a strategic advisor for developing new attractions, TDAC prioritises the guest experience to achieve success.
Creating a 9+ organisation
First, he explained what a “9+ organisation” entails, which was described as the roadmap to success for operating an excellent theme park for both guests and employees. The “9+” refers to a score out of 10. When employees are satisfied, they will be more enthusiastic in their work. This positivity rubs off on the guest, who will be converted to a returning visitor. By focusing on both of these groups, we can create a cycle of positive engagement with the attraction.
“If you create a theme park, it’s not about selling more tickets - it’s about creating memories.”
In the long-run, creating memories means that your attraction will endure over time. If young children enjoy their visit, they are likely to return with their children, grandchildren, and so on. This will eventually embed your park into the culture - such as how the Efteling has been able to do in the Netherlands.
The steps go as follows:
The ‘Road to Success’ 7-step plan. Courtesy of Coen Bertens / Tourist Destinations and Attractions Consultancy
The journey starts from the company’s culture. Use ambassadors within the organisation. Known to many employees, they are able to learn from colleagues and create the vision that leads to achieving a 9+ score.
Create the vision. By engaging employees with the overall goals of the organisation, they will feel a sense of ownership in making it come true. At Efteling, different charts are used to represent the organisation as a whole, the team, and the individual. Using their five pillars as a guide; sustainability, experience, employees, technology and cooperation, every team can understand how they can use their talents to achieve their goals.
Step 2: Engage employees with the company's vision. Courtesy of Coen Bertens / Tourist Destinations and Attractions Consultancy
Involve the leadership team and facilitate the growth of operations teams. Leaders must have the following skills to be effective: inspirational, coaching, people-oriented, improvement-focused, guest-oriented and a team player.
Focus on talents instead of tasks. By creating your own personal chart, you are able to think clearly about your talents, personal development goals, and how they can contribute to the goals of the organisation. When everyone takes responsibility for their development, it helps the team build KPIs and goals.
Step 4: Focus on talent, rather than tasks. Courtesy of Coen Bertens / Tourist Destinations and Attractions Consultancy
Use personas to map out the guest journey. As Coen says, the smallest details make the greatest difference. Ask the following questions: what kind of guests are coming to my park? What are their opinions on price? Who are they coming with? How much time do they have? What are their values? By thinking about different types of customers, we can consider what their day looks like: where are they going and when? We need to make sure that we are developing experiences that offer what they are looking for.
You must go from storytelling to ‘story doing’. Colleagues can make the difference in how guests experience the attraction; make sure you’re enthusiastic for what you do.
The final step is operational excellence. Coen says, you need to make the park “a little bit better every day.” This includes team meetings every morning to establish their goals for the day. By being proactive, and making incremental steps towards progress, the park can achieve operational excellence.
Developing a new theme park
Now, Coen moves on to how to develop a theme park or other large scale visitor attraction.
Design day
Coen says that sizing is one of the primary issues in the planning phase. If you make an attraction too small, operations will suffer and you’ll be missing out on making money. If you make it too large, you’ll have wasted money by overbuilding. It’s important to build an attraction to the right size and consider what an appropriate capacity will be.
We can visualise this by placing the numbers of visitors in the park onto a timeline of peak operating hours. At Efteling, around 85% of visitors are in the park during peak hours (12-2pm), meaning that the park must find capacity for a high number of visitors between these times. If you know how many people are attending the park in a day, it’s important to ensure that there is enough capacity for shows, rides, retail and food and beverage outlets across the course of the day for all guests.
Rides and shows
Coen gave us some key tips for how to develop rides and shows with operations in mind.
Accessibility is at the core of ensuring the park is satisfactory for guests. This includes having special entrances for disabled guests, so that they can experience attractions, as well as offering diverse experiences such as the Nest! Play Forest in Efteling, which is accessible to guests with and without disabilities. When developing attractions with disabled guests in mind, it is important to ask external advocacy organisations for advice, to ensure you are doing all you can to make it accessible.
In locations with high numbers of international guests, it is more important than ever to make sure that everyone can understand where to go. Use symbols in park signage to help people navigate.
Pre-shows are able to extend the ride experience as well as providing indoor space for guests on days with adverse weather.
Always keep in mind that the theoretical hourly ride capacity (THRC) is not the operational hourly ride capacity (OHRC). Other factors will always reduce the throughput, so don’t take THRC as gospel!
How can we increase capacity?
With that said, Coen gives us some ideas for how you can increase ride capacity.
Introduce a single rider line, which ensures all seats are filled.
Add more trains to the track, where possible.
Utilise ‘people-eating’ attractions that have a high hourly ride capacity. By having one people-eater and several smaller attractions, you are able to distribute guests more effectively.
Increase your opening hours. This offers more time for guests to visit, and more chance that you will earn your money back in food and beverage sales.
Increase your opening days. By expanding the season length, you’re able to attract more visitors, as well as attracting staff who are encouraged by the consistency of year-round work.
Spread visitors around the park, for example by using an app that displays wait times. By ensuring that they are not concentrated in one area, the whole park will be able to better manage guest flow.When creating a new park, you can’t overlook the importance of the infrastructure, both inside the park and in conjunction with the outside. For example, having flexibility with car lanes, in order to prevent traffic jams in the local area.
Main gate and services
Everything in the resort area should be planned for the comfort of the guest. This includes toilets in front of the main gate, easily accessible public transport and disabled parking, and the option to rent scooters, wheelchairs and strollers. You could think about making the ticket entry gates guest-friendly, by thinking twice before installing turnstiles.
In addition, you should consider how much planning guests have put into their visit. If your attraction is based in a tourist area, you’re more likely to have spontaneous visitors who arrive without a pre-purchased ticket. In comparison, approximately 90% of Efteling’s guests arrive with a pre-booked ticket. This will depend on the time of year, country and the neighbourhood the attraction is based in. You should have enough ticket machines and ATMs at the front of the park to cater to the needs of guests.
Once inside the park, it’s a good idea to place a meet and greet to welcome guests. After the structure of security and the main gate, having an open space at the front of the park where children can see the characters is a fast route to a smile. Coen notes that this is something Disney is successful at; as guests enter Main Street and quickly interact with Mickey Mouse.
Another thing it’s important to think about is parking. Work out how many people there are per car, and work out the capacity of the park. From there, you know how many parking spaces you need. This depends on the location of the attraction and public transport availability. You will need more parking spaces in Efteling than you would in an attraction in central London.
Food and beverage
In theme parks, there tends to be more fast service offerings than full service restaurants, as guests prefer to be out experiencing the park rather than having a long dinner. For attractions that involve longer stays, full service dining may be more popular as there is less of a time crunch for guests. Other dining options include buffets, kiosks, carts and machines. You should have these available in every area, so guests don’t have to travel far to find food.
It’s important to think about different moments of the day in the guest's journey. From breakfast, to coffee, lunch, snacks and dinner, the park needs to be able to cater to all of them.
Retail
Finally, Coen discussed retail with the participants. There are several types of retail offerings with different purposes. A flagship store where guests can purchase souvenirs at the end of the day is located close to the park entrance. At the exits of some attractions, guests can leave via a ride-specific merchandise store. Around the park, there are also opportunities for ride photography, digital photos and shop carts.
At the end of the session, Coen graciously answered many participants’ questions regarding capacity, accessibility and other themes brought up by the development process. As they progress with their schematic design phase, Coen’s presentation about capacity and guest flow was extremely helpful.
We at NextGen Showcase would like to express our gratitude to Coen Bertens for his contribution to our Educational Program as a Speaker. Thank you!
This article was written by our Editor, Rosie Willoughby, with assistance from Emily Budzynski-Seymour.
