Industry Influencer


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The keys to recovery


Andy Povey, MD Convious UK & Ireland, explains the keys to industry recovery and the path forward for parks and attractions


Park World: What was your path to becoming MD of Convious?


Andy Povey, Convious UK Ireland MD


Andy Povey: I started working at Chessington World of Adventures 30 years ago, driving the train around the park, so I was a ride operator for a while. Then I moved into ticket sales at Merlin, what was the Tussauds Group, which I did for about 18 years. Then I worked for a large


provider, then late last year I saw what Convious were doing, realised nobody else was doing it and joined the company. I thought it was how things should be done, and I wanted to be a part of that.


PW: There was recent discussion about how Convious viewed its customer relationships as indicative of an upswing in the industry; can you expand on that?


…if you’re able to go from a business model where 20% of people are booking online and in advance to 80%, as an operator you have all of that data not just from a sales and marketing perspective, but from an operational perspective as well


AP: Just like every other industry over the past two years we have had a huge change. As a space we had to grasp that to start with. There were a lot of not- brilliant solutions to some of the restrictions we had, from capacity controls even down to the PVC screens cashiers had to sit behind. There’s a huge move away from cash and a significant number of attractions are now completely cashless. As a digital service provider we are quite excited about that, and of course there is the data you gather from a cashless transaction. Someone handing over a fiver gives you no information about the customer at all – and cashless lets you become part of their experience. What we’re seeing in the market is some attractions really grasping this and


using it to improve their business, so if you’re able to go from a business model where 20% of people are booking online and in advance to 80%, as an operator you have all of that data not just from a sales and marketing perspective, but from an operational perspective as well. You know how many sandwiches you need to make, how many people to run the car park and more. From a customer perspective, your experience at a park with 5,000 people there


is entirely different from your experience when there are 10,000 people. The more savvy operators are looking at whether they need to rush back to full volume where lots of promotions, lots of offers giving it away for free so they can get people in through the door – or are we now in a qualitative position where we can start looking at the value per customer and start delivering a better service? From a personal point of view I took my kids to London Zoo in 2021, on a sunny


Saturday in June. I was dreading it, but because the zoo had capped capacity we had an absolutely fantastic experience. As an industry we are able to deliver a better service to our customer through knowing more about them, being able to deliver something to them that they really want, and that they are prepared to pay for.


24 SUMMER PART 2 2022


PW: That better experience gives you a repeat customer and gives more value for the entirety of that customer relationship, of course.


AP: Early in my career I was a duty manager at Madam Tussauds and there would be a queue to get in the building, then from the moment you got in you were queuing to get out because it was rammed full. And that meant that repeat visitors were a rarity at that time. We can and are changing all of that now.


PW: What are the main reasons people come to you for business? Is cashless a big driver for that?


AP: Cashless is one of the things people recognise they need for their business. The larger part is engaging better in a digital environment than they presently do. In the attraction space, particularly parks, the traditional thing to do to attract visitors is to spend front of house – the next big ride or experience. The attractions world in the digital space is perhaps 10-15 years behind the rest of the world.


PW: Where is the industry heading – what’s the next innovation or efficiency? AP: I think it will all be around personalisation. We’re doing some of it right


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