© Karls Erlebnis-Dorf
Runhappy
www.parkworld-online.com
Most venues have a response-time standard. Meeting it is the challenge.
By Mark Ghermezian, Co-Founder & CEO, Runhappy O
ne family entertainment operator I know publishes a clear promise in its sales manual. The office is staffed from 9am
to 6pm, seven days a week. Any inquiry arriving before 4pm gets a call back the same day, and anything later is answered by 10am the following morning. It's a good standard. It's written down and circulated. I asked the company's founder how often they
hit it. “As much as we like to get back to everyone within 24 hours,” he said, “we don't.”
The standard is not the problem Almost every operator I speak to has a number like this one. Very few can tell me how often they meet it. And the ones who check are usually surprised at just how difficult it is to keep up. It is rarely a question of effort, and team size
alone does not solve it either. A marketing director leading a five-person events team had recently tried implementing a 48 hour reply window, but was struggling to hit it. At the other end, one large complex runs ‘the biggest call center in the city’, with five agents live alongside a full sales and catering team. Asked how quickly a group inquiry gets answered, he said 24 hours, sometimes 48. Both the dedicated call center and the five- person events team arrive at the same place.
The clock the guest is running Meanwhile, the customer has their own set of expectations about response times. Group and party inquiries arrive when the
person planning has time to plan, which is rarely during business hours. At one large complex, their team sees a steady stream of leads that land between 8pm and 7am. A marketing executive who is also a parent
described what that looks like from the other side. She books her own children's parties in the evening after work. And if the venue she wants doesn’t answer, she said, “I go with whatever I know is available and can answer me, not with where I really want to go.” That is exactly the kind of inquiry the written
standard is meant to cover. But the problem is that the customer’s clock is faster: she is ready to book at 7pm, and by 10am the next morning she may already have gone somewhere else.
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Delay also quietly shrinks the upsell potential.
A VP of parks and attractions described a parent wondering about a balloon arch or extra cupcakes. When the question is answered immediately, the add-ons are more likely to end up in the final booking. But “if you have time to think and think and think,” she said, a parent might change their mind: “maybe we don't need that.”
How fast is fast enough? The best response is an immediate one. A customer who gets an answer while they are actively planning will book. They have less reason to keep searching and more opportunity to ask questions, weigh alternatives, and ultimately secure their party. But a slower response is not automatically a lost
one. In the venue data from last month's article (“Why so many group inquiries never become bookings”), the average successful booking still took 31 hours from first quote to payment. Speed matters, but even if an immediate reply isn’t possible, every inquiry deserves a timely follow up. So measure response time by looking at the
distribution: what share of inquiries are answered within an hour, what share take more than a day,
and what share arrive outside the hours anyone is working. And what’s the conversion rate on each of these? Then set those numbers against the standard
you have written down. The operator I opened with has an advantage: he has a clear standard, which means he can tell you honestly when the team misses it. Many venues cannot say either way. The next, and potentially the hardest, question is
who should own this work in the first place, which I will take up in the final article in this series.
Mark Ghermezian is Co-Founder & CEO of Runhappy (
runhappy.ai), a managed group and birthday sales operation for family entertainment centers and experience venues, the former CEO of American Dream, and an investor-operator across a portfolio of technology and experience businesses. Find him at the IAAPA Orlando Expo (
runhappy.ai/ iaapa-2026).
OCTOBER 2026
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