Using Attraction
Management Software to Engage and Enhance Experiences

Lockdown has proven to us all the value of a captive audience, of meeting face-to-face, of acting to a live audience, and of having the public in your place of “magic and wonder.”

Being able to engage with them and get a feel for what parts of your attraction or event they are engaging with and what they are skipping past, is key to ensuring your tourist/visitor attraction keeps pace with the needs of your audience. 

Lockdown gave us another message, however, which is the value of digital communication and digital interfaces. The latest technology that has been made available to attraction operators is the Audience Engagement Platform (AEP), an essential part of the industry's attraction management software. Not only does this add incredible depth to the story being told on-site, but it also has a level of engagement that will become industry defining, more so for the data that the engagement generates, and what it can be utilised for - think Google Analytics for audience tracking and behaviour on-site as opposed to your website.

Highly powerful attraction management and audience engagement software incorporating all the regular operational features such as ticketing integration, membership and mobile check-in etc bolted to a highly customisable audience facing experience app. 

Through the use of this platform and app, an attraction can provide a wealth of information to its visiting audience. Tour guides, curators, keepers and wildlife rangers are invaluable but not always available, and they can only serve a limited audience. Previously, that left visitors having to be content with signage or at best digital displays which would provide additional information, but that information would still be limited. Not only would it be limited, but it would also have a very limited engagement, as it would require the visitor to read and make sense of the information presented without interaction or questions asked.

Of course more progressive venues utilise video display monitors or voice recordings sharing information, noises, and sound effects, but while these offer far more engagement than a printed sign, there’s still a host of other engagement opportunities offered by an audience engagement platform and mobile app.

But back to basics - what exactly is an AEP? In simple terms, it’s an essential piece of attraction management software, specifically designed to enhance audience engagement. A really simple, easy to use platform that allows you to create, customise and control your own interactive visitor/audience app - no technical or design skills needed, no experience required, and no need for large upfront investment in one-off app projects that don’t leave you in control, as both the platform and the app are fully customisable and licensed as a Software As A Service (SaaS).

The beauty of the AEP app is that it’s in the hands of the visitor or audience both before, during and after a visit. As cloud-based software, the AEP effectively allows an endless amount of information, video, and audio to be on hand to visitors. This ensures that they have all the interactive information they might need about a display or exhibit, which in turn creates longer term engagement and dwell time. With their curiosity satiated, at the end of the day the platform and app will ensure that their experience on the day is amplified as well as the memory they take home with them. 

By tracking interactions and activity, the app not only enables visitors to be super engaged on-site but off-site too, as it creates a digital footprint of activity that can be relived when back at home. Creating continuous engagement with the visitor once they have left, you can offer additional layers of information on an ongoing basis, as well as sending push notifications of upcoming events or offers that will appeal to them, based around their on-site activity.  

Data gathered and analysed from tracking the visitor’s engagement (from the installed app), leads to better insights for the attraction on several scores. First, it understands what exhibits or displays visitors like, having monitored their dwell time for instance, and can send them bespoke information.  Secondly, attractions can better curate their site and exhibits having gained valuable insights into audience behaviour.

But this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the different ways an AEP can facilitate engagement between the operator (the zoo, museum, aquarium, cultural or heritage site for example) and the visitor.  

To discover how to captivate your audiences using digital, get in touch with us and request a demo or read some of our insights.