Using Media to Expand Your Welcome
It’s common in destination design to regard the front gate or entrance as the first hello, the initial guest contact that signals their moment of arrival. But let’s take a step back and ask ourselves if that’s really true. In a world where the physical and the digital blur constantly, where is the front door? Is the new front gate on someone’s couch, 500 miles away at 9 pm on a Tuesday?
The tourists of the world are loaded with more research power than ever before. They are coming to your location with many preconceived notions. Where once a guest would tiptoe to your turnstiles with few assumptions, their expectations are at an all-time high.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA “ARRIVAL”
They’ve seen your marketing on multiple channels, followed hashtags, noted “influencers” favorite photo ops, and they’ve probably interacted with your website or online shopping capabilities. To assume a guest’s first view of your attraction is the moment they arrive is to ignore the vast content loaded to social media every day. Instagram boasts 1 billion users alone. The pandemic has brought out daydreamy habits, a sort of “window shopping” where future travelers use social media or Pinterest boards to develop their own in-depth planning guides. These can go so far as what they will wear or read on the plane.
Before you write off that fanaticism, take note: “The pandemic has obviously been really traumatic and era-defining,” says Vinita Mehta, PhD, a clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C. “I think that one way to understand it and cope with the trauma is by staying future-oriented. Very often, when people are going through something extremely difficult or distressing, they handle it by focusing on the future.”
Are you positioning your attraction in front of these future thinkers? Are you engaging as much as possible with thoughtful content on social media, through email blasts, or virtual opportunities? Can they imagine themselves in the story while they anticipate the trip? And once they return, can they continue to engage with you meaningfully until they just can’t stand it and have to come back again?
YOUR WEBSITE “ARRIVAL”
We’ll assume you have a website because it’s 2021. That’s a bare minimum, non-negotiable. But have you ever toured around that site with the eyes of a first-timer? If we think about the virtual like we do the physical, have you considered how clear and hospitable the user experience can be? Baymard Institute reports that 27% of customers will abandon a purchase if it seems too hard to complete.
We would never imagine a cold and unhelpful human interaction at the ticket booths, why would we allow them at the digital booth? Is it hard to find your ticket button? Hard to understand how to make a reservation or how to get help to amend one? Baymard reports that customer can perceive a slow-loading website as a lack of overall service and 75% will abandon a purchase for snail speeds.
And your mobile site! Did you just shrink it down to fit an iPhone screen? Barilliance reports that 86% of purchases are abandoned on mobile phones at some point. Not because mobile phone users are flakes but because mobile sites aren’t truly optimized for mobile. If it’s hard to use, potential buyers get frustrated and leave. If they’re frustrated at home, they’ll carry those opinions to the real experience.
THE ARRIVAL “ARRIVAL”
Ah, finally! We are at your gate! This entry portal is the delivery of a promise you’ve made through the digital outreach prior arrival, a place where the dreaming becomes reality. Is the theming, signage, branding, etc. lining up with what they saw online? Will they see your energy coming through in real-time? Cohesion in this arrival will say so much about what your attraction values.
Digital signage is very commonplace in attractions for a variety of reasons today. Are you using yours to give timely messages? If you’ve moved to a paperless system, are those tickets easy to pull up, positioned on the screen where it’s easy for your scanner? And let’s use these to their full potential in assisting guests with disabilities or language translation needs.
This is just the beginning of possibilities for media in the guest journey. We will dive deeper into atmospheric possibilities beyond the front door in the next few weeks of Destinology.
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