The term “big data” is often referenced in business today. But you don’t have to be a large, corporate organization for your business to benefit from using data. 

Paul Cummings with Strategic Adventures recently said that break even is a critical metric to track how your business is doing. In our industry, this number is typically measured in total participants. The more people that visit, the closer you are to breaking even and/or increasing profits. 

Using data and studying trends in your daily and seasonal operations, including attendance and guest behavior, can play a significant role in making large and small tweaks to your business that could increase total guests and profits.

The sheer volume of information tracked, captured, and available can be overwhelming. The first two we’ll tackle here are the park’s ramp pace, or the time it takes to get to capacity on peak days, and attendance trends.

Ramp Pace: How Quickly You get to Capacity

This data point is focused on those busy days in your park that are selling out or getting close to sell-out. Those wonderful scenarios where you’re actually worried about the possibility of having too much demand, and are forced to turn people away due to supply constraints. Now consider this: you can release tickets at a faster rate during the a.m. ramp and p.m. drop-off periods in order to reach capacity sooner, and keep the park full longer.

The crowd-control flows are usually set with peak times in mind. During peak, bottlenecks are created if the pace isn’t tightly controlled. The staff’s ability to multi-task between check-ins, orientations, and harnessing a large volume of people at once dictates the flow. During the morning or afternoon, when the park is not yet (or no longer) “full,” certain staff members may have downtime and can help in areas they otherwise wouldn’t be able to when the park is full (i.e. checking people in, helping with orientation, etc.). The park can be more efficient and safely handle more people per segment.

To accomplish this, you can create unique, customized segments based on your attendance trends. There are parks we work with that will expand their cadence in morning and afternoon segments from 10 people every 20 minutes to 30 people every 20 minutes.

Even if you are uncomfortable with such an extreme change, take a look at the graph above to see what a very small change does to the flow of guests and ramp times.

Daily Attendance Trends

Use data collected through your reservations system to identify trends in your park’s attendance patterns. Days of the week and hours of the day are both key trends to isolate.

Identifying common times of day and days of the week that your park is below peak capacity will help inform changes aimed at growing your park’s attendance. Conversely, it will identify peak demand periods so you can plan accordingly and maximize your revenue potential.

Let’s look at an example:

The Adventure Park at Virginia Beach Aquarium

The operators recognized the trend of weeknights being significantly slower than the busy weekend nights. Their solution was to start a “glow in the park” event during the week, and apply a smart strategy to their plan.

Objective 1: Create a fun, fast-paced environment with dynamic change and excitement.

• Distribute glow lights and have a DJ or band playing music

• Two-hour climb times bring higher margins and more turnover to keep energy up

Objective 2: Maximize typical tourist travel schedule.

• Management analyzed tourist patterns and identified Tuesdays and Thursdays as the nights to catch visitors on their way into or out of town

Objective 3: Promote.

• Flyers at local businesses

• Facebook events

• Weekly newsletters to hotel contacts and previous visitors

• Promote at local events

The result? The park went from lulls on all weeknights to being nearly sold out two nights a week throughout the busy summer tourist season.

Final Thoughts

Analyzing both ramp pace and daily attendance trends can help you realize what areas in your park that need tweaking. Do you need to stay open later on Saturdays to accommodate high attendance? What are your peak times for events? Using data can help you answer these questions and overall, increase profit and participants.