Enhancing the visitor experience

As we move towards spring in a year that’s free from Covid restrictions on travel and gatherings, family days out to the UK’s many visitor attractions are being planned, with the Easter holidays providing a welcome boon to beleaguered venues and destinations. Fingers crossed for decent weather!

The latest research from VisitBritain reports an increase in marketing expenditure for 43% of attractions, with use of social media a dominant tactic, and two-thirds of visitor attractions being back to pre-pandemic staffing levels. Whilst visitor numbers have been increasing, volumes remain lower than before Covid reared its ugly head.

Adult admission fees have increased significantly too, as sites have sought to balance income against lower admissions. An increase in prices, however, can produce an understandable increase in customer expectations – and an increased prospect of damaging reviews if these expectations are not being met. And customer reviews are, of course, the first port of call for many considering whether to buy a ticket or not!

Online reviews are one of the richest sources of insight into how customers really feel about your brand, product and services. However, Reviews Analysis is overlooked by many brands because it is complex. Analysing large volumes of unstructured data is beyond the capabilities of most in-house teams and agencies.

Metricomm uses a combination of its data capture and semantic analysis tools to turn large quantities of qualitative comment into measurable, quantitative results that shed light on the what and the why of customer experience. We go way beyond the binary ‘positive’ vs ‘negative’ to reveal the emotions, intentions and opportunities presented in your customer reviews. This allows organisations to obtain real business value from reviews data – by understanding what motivates customers to be brand advocates or detractors.

Coupled with identification of trends over time and regular monitoring, brands can identify deep-rooted problems and strategic issues, as well as highlighting quick wins that can rapidly influence customer satisfaction levels.

We undertook analysis of the customer reviews generated by a famous visitor attraction   and those of its key competitor, in order to determine how their customer experience, service and satisfaction metrics compared. 

Our analysis considered the long-term trends so that we could see developments in consumer opinion over a 2-3 year period, putting current results into perspective. 

We compared review results across brands in the same sector, identifying how the visitor attraction was winning or losing against its key competitors. Then we began to delve deeper into the underlying themes which were driving consumer opinion, including:    

• Queues & waiting
• Parking
• Customer service
• Toilets
• Cleanliness
• Food & drink
• Staff

The analysis revealed a host of opportunities for the famous attraction to up its game, address its weaknesses and build on its strengths to continue its recovery from lost revenues and welcome back eager fun-seekers – whilst most importantly, giving them a positive experience that was worth sharing on review sites for others to see and decide to follow-suit in making their own booking.

You can download a sample of our report below and contact us to undertake cost-effective analysis of your customer reviews. You never know what you might see, and it could help ensure your marketing spend delivers the results you want!