For decades, the attractions industry has relied on annual or season passes to deliver value to loyal guests. These passes have been a great way to generate additional revenue that encourages guests to visit more frequently than they otherwise would have if they purchased a general admission ticket on each visit. Better yet, parks often sweeten the deal by offering discounts on food & beverage and retail to encourage additional spending on each visit.
However, parks and attractions of all scopes and sizes (including chains as big as Six Flags) are embracing the subscription mentality that guests have become accustomed to (think Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peloton, and many others). Operators are well aware of the business benefits successful membership programs provide. Read on to see how you can generate even more revenue, reduce your guest acquisition costs, increase spend per head, and use data to improve the experience for your most loyal visitors.
Generate predictable recurring revenue
Projecting revenue and attendance has always been a challenge for the attractions industry regarding accuracy. While the number of years you have been operating allows you to continue to refine your forecasts with historical trends and the number of tickets sold for specific dates, combined with external factors such as gas prices, weather, and the geopolitical climate, revenue forecasts still rely on guests waking up that morning and making a decision to either visit your venue or not.
With recurring memberships, your revenue forecasts become substantially more accurate. While you still need to juxtapose it with predicted attendance, recurring memberships allow a greater insight into future performance, which is especially beneficial for smaller attractions and independent businesses. Knowing the amount that guests will be charged on specific days of the month offers an immense amount of peace of mind, regardless if the guest visits or not.
Spend less on guest acquisition
A guest who becomes a member allows you to turn them into a guest for life. Rather than constantly chasing new guests with expensive marketing campaigns, focus on retaining your guests, and you will spend much less. This also is critical when it comes time to renew. Renewing a season or annual pass is a friction point in the guest experience that can be eliminated by automatically charging the card on file. The guest doesn’t even need to think about when their pass expires… because it doesn’t.
As a side note, what happens if the card is expired or if the guest cancels their card? Today’s technology allows you to take advantage of dunning, which prevents involuntary churn from occurring.
Increased spending onsite
Naturally, your members will likely enjoy visits where they never make a purchase once inside your venue. Many people think that that is the case for most members, and they usually shy away from membership programs because they feel they will spend less than other transient visitors. Our data, however, shows the opposite. Members spend an average of $2 to $5 more in industries such as trampoline parks. This number can be much higher in larger settings with more spending opportunities.
Members love to feel appreciated, so offering discounts on retail and food & beverage can entice them to plan their visit around mealtimes and even pick up a souvenir on their way out. Many attractions offer discounts on admission for friends and family, and even discounted memberships as well, encouraging your members to advocate for your business and help to grow your loyal fanbase. Onto the next point…
Grow your loyal fanbase
Repeat visitation is one of the core tenets of guest loyalty, and offering a recurring membership gives your guests regular reasons to visit. By offering substantial value in how you price your memberships, you can make it a “no-brainer” decision for your more satisfied guests to demonstrate their loyalty by joining your membership program and making your venue their default choice when planning a day out.
Many attractions take this to the next level, even beyond offering discounts, by holding member-exclusive events, member previews of new attractions or experiences, and member-exclusive merchandise. There is no limit to the engagement you can build around your membership program that fosters advocacy for your brand.
Gain valuable data
One of the most overlooked benefits of recurring memberships is the massive data you can collect from your guests that amplify your business intelligence capabilities. When you know more about your guests, you can serve them better, offer promotions that resonate specifically with their demographic, and take their loyalty to the next level.
When guests become members, you have all the basic information, such as their names, contact information, and dates of their visits. Still, even beyond that, you can determine how often they use their memberships if they visit your other locations (if applicable), how old they are and when their birthdays are, and what they regularly purchase on each visit. Think of the possibilities you have to how you can better serve your guests with this information.
As memberships become more commonplace throughout everything we regularly purchase in our daily lives, it will be even more critical that the attractions industry embrace this trend in consumer behavior and capitalize on all the gains that recurring memberships offer.
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