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BigQuestion How do you deal with difficult guests, either in the park or online?
Charles Coyle, Tayto Park, Ireland: The way we look at it, every complaint is valid to a certain extent. The way that a customer articulates themselves may not be always be best way, but we try and listen to them and we do our best to accommodate people. If someone comes here we want them to come back, and the last thing you want to do is be disrespectful. More often than that we can talk to them, diffuse the problem and learn something from it. We always do look back on our feedback, some of the best improvements we have made to the park have been through this. One of the most powerful tools we have at the moment is social media. It makes you better, but if doesn’t give you chance to be lazy.
Kevin Stumpf, Hersheypark, USA: We try to listen and empathise with any guest that might have had an experience that didn't meet their expectations. Most times guests want to be heard and understood. Actively listening with the intent to understand goes a long way.
Figures of Fun
80
number of individual ride and attraction operators at the Prater, Vienna. The famous Austrian amusement park, which celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2016, is considering implementing a pay-one-price system
110,000
number of audience members at Cirque du Soleil’s Amaluna show during its 7-week run this summer at PortAventura, Spain
364,000
Claudia Leicht, Hansa Park, Germany: We don’t view a complaint as a complaint but a challenge; a hint to become better. It doesn’t help to close your eyes and shut your ears! There are difficult guests, and we try and meet everybody’s desire where possible, but of course there are of course boundaries, for example safety. We had an issue with Kärnan, our new coaster, with people wearing flip flops. You are not supposed to wear those shoes on the ride, so we ended up offering some other shoes for sale in our shop, because you must wear some shoes in case there is an evacuation. Still some guests argued. Safety always comes first, but sometimes the guest desire doesn’t always come along with that.
Allan Ansdale Jr, Adventure City (Los Angeles): We take all guest’s complaints seriously and do our best to resolve the situation to the guest’s satisfaction.
British pounds ($560,000/€485,000) – profit for the year to March 22 at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, according to accounts filed at Companies House. The UK park made a loss the previous year
2,000,000
number of guests until end of August at Puy Du Fou, placing the live entertainment theme park well on course to consolidate its position as France’s busiest non-Disney park for a third successive year
13,000,000
number of visitors since 2000 to Guinness Storehouse, Dublin. One out of every two tourists in the Irish capital pays a visit to the attraction, which was recently voted best in Europe in the World Travel Awards
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