ANALYSIS
IS MONEY TIME
At a time when consumers are spending less, how can operators encourage visitors to spend what they do have at their attraction? Alan Love offers some advice on revenue building in a fl at market
ALVA Quality Benchmark Survey – which is produced for the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions in the UK – BDRC Continental measures visitors’ rating of what there is to do and what there is to see at attractions. The survey also measures visitors’ dwell time. We’ve found that both are positively correlated with visit duration. Adding one per cent to the proportion
I 50
who rate what there is to do as excellent adds about 1.2 minutes to the average visit. And adding one per cent to the proportion who rate what there is to see as excellent adds about 0.8 minutes to the average visit. And yes I do know that correlation is not the same as causation. The survey also measures their use of
retail and refreshment outlets. We can demonstrate from this the rate at which increasing visit duration adds to refresh- ment purchase rates and, to a lesser extent, to retail purchase rates. Adding one minute to dwell time adds
0.27 per cent to the proportion who buy refreshments. Adding one minute to dwell time adds 0.15 per cent to the proportion who buy at retail outlets on-site.
t has long been known that, within limits, increasing visitors’ dwell time increases their propensity for second- ary spend in the attraction’s retail and refreshments out- lets. But how do operators attain that outcome?
Among more than 30 metrics on the This information becomes
important when you start to apply spend per visitor per hour on retail and on refreshments. This is one of the fi nancial measurements that analyst Lesley Morisetti, director of LM Associates, calculates on ALVA’s Financial Benchmarking survey – and one which any attraction can calculate for itself. There is a fi nancial value to
increased dwell time, and this can apply in free and paid-for attractions alike. Increasing visitor spend may not be easy in the next 12 months, so investment in the core prod- uct may help build secondary spend.
(Above) review sites such as TripAdvisor are increasing the intensity and immediacy of recommendations – or deterrence
WORD OF MOUTH We have some evidence that word of mouth and websites vie for the crown as the most important source of infl uence on visiting an attraction. These two strands have been brought
together in recent years through web based review sites such as TripAdvisor. Furthermore, the apparently inexorable rise of Twitter and Facebook (complete with pictures) seem to be increasing the inten- sity and immediacy of recommendation (or deterrence). Measures of mention rates are well established, but measures of senti- ment are still a work in progress – not least
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital
given people’s’ tendency towards irony. For example, “£3 for an ice-cream? Great!” The ALVA Quality Benchmark survey measures claimed willingness to recom- mend. And what do we fi nd? You guessed it. Positive correlations between recom- mendation and the ratings for what there is to do and for what there is to see. Adding one per cent to the proportion
who rate what there is to do as excellent adds about 0.66 per cent to the proportion who claim they will defi nitely recommend. And adding one per cent to the proportion who rate what there is to see as excellent adds about 0.68 per cent to the proportion who claim they will defi nitely recommend. You can estimate a fi nancial value of
AM 1 2012 ©cybertrek 2012
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