 
Writer: Peter Vindevogel, CEO, The Park Playground
At present’s enterprise leaders and shoppers alike are dealing with turbulent financial occasions. The purpose of any enterprise is to be worthwhile however there is no such thing as a doubt that a number of latest world occasions have made it extremely troublesome for some. Amid these challenges, companies are striving for progress in 2024 however to take action requires the prioritisation of buyer satisfaction.
Throughout the leisure business, companies starting from hospitality by means of to theme parks need to adapt their ROI fashions to quickly altering visitor expectations. At present’s shoppers need shared leisure experiences that provide one thing distinctive each time. To satisfy these excessive expectations, the leisure business panorama has morphed by merging two beforehand separate worlds: meals & beverage leisure and play & leisure leisure.
The booming expertise financial system
Not too long ago, Millennials and Gen Zers have continued to drive the expertise financial system by spending extra on memorable experiences over materials possessions, and their expectations for high-quality entertainment-led, social experiences have grown quickly. A latest Europe-wide research signifies that this pattern among the many ‘expertise technology’ is more likely to proceed. In actual fact, 88 p.c of these surveyed deliberate to prioritise spending the identical or extra on experiences in 2024 (in comparison with 2023). The research additionally reveals that among the many high causes for reserving an expertise is to socialize with family and friends, whereas food-related or household experiences had been among the many high experiences of selection. These findings present that investing in delivering high-quality shared experiences is essential to drive enterprise progress and preserve aggressive benefit.
Whereas the expertise financial system has been in place for a very long time, there are a couple of key components for its latest evolutions. Following the pandemic we’ve got seen an increasing number of companies within the leisure business merge with social actions. Provide chains disrupted throughout Covid proceed to be impacted by an elevated value of supplies forcing operators to re-evaluate the profitability of their present enterprise fashions. As well as, folks emerged from lockdown with a brand new appreciation and want for spending time with family and friends, and experiencing new and thrilling occasions. These components have given rise to ‘eatertainment,’ an idea born out of the collision of two leisure sectors – meals & beverage and play & leisure – that’s each mutually helpful to companies and meets guests’ wants.
Studying from business developments
Companies throughout the business globally have recognised the significance of specializing in all the customer journey. Disneyland Paris Resort, for instance, lately introduced an enormous funding to reimagine all the visitor expertise from leisure to eating and buying. Equally, mega developments within the Center East, resembling Qiddiya in Saudi Arabia are integrating leisure, meals and sports activities into one vacation spot, delivering recent experiences to company each time they go to.
Companies can take helpful insights from these developments by contemplating easy methods to convey collectively a number of features to create a must-see vacation spot. With visitor expectations increased than ever, many companies are turning to immersive applied sciences like blended actuality (MR) to satisfy the demand.
MR know-how has hit a stage of maturity and is extra dependable and accessible each from a usability and an financial standpoint, in comparison with just some years in the past. Moreover, MR can remodel areas into numerous fantastical immersive worlds for teams, delivering the type of social, entertainment-led experiences that guests need.
Excellent concord
Listed below are a couple of key issues for any enterprise attempting to realize the fragile steadiness of delivering high-quality visitor experiences with profitability. It’s clear that immediately’s audiences worth significant, social, entertainment-led experiences so particular person digital experiences are going to turn out to be much less widespread than they’ve been beforehand. Operators ought to intention to nurture each leisure and social features equally in out there experiences. Audiences need the liberty of selection. It’s vital for companies to construct a various content material library that appeals to all ages and pursuits and supplies company with the flexibleness to decide on a special expertise every time they go to. Contemplate integrating newer applied sciences, resembling immersive VR, to make experiences extra participating, interactive and personalised in order that it’s completely different each time it’s performed. And this doesn’t need to be expensive; turnkey options can see a return in your funding rapidly with out the monetary upheaval of constructing options your self.
Balancing buyer satisfaction with ROI is an ongoing journey. For the leisure business, the reply could be very a lot about combining worlds: consuming and leisure, the true and the imagined, the bodily and the digital. By embracing visitor expertise as a precedence and utilizing rising applied sciences like immersive VR to satisfy visitor expectations, companies can navigate the difficult financial panorama with higher confidence.
