The Museum of Play and Art (MoPA) was founded on the belief that more play and creativity will create a brighter future. As one of Australia’s leading play-based learning centers, MoPA attracts thousands of weekly guests across two locations. With bright colors and hand-painted murals, MoPA offers an interactive environment that encourages children to participate and learn through activity.
Max Pfeifer is the Experience Director responsible for MoPA’s experience strategy. Recently, Max joined the Guest Experience Show to talk about how MoPA delivers a superior experience that leads to advocacy, the importance of training and development, and how MoPA creates a comfortable experience through its unique capacity management strategy.
Great experiences drive business growth
Max shares that their growth is product-led more than sales and marketing-led, meaning the experience they deliver onsite leads to repeat visitation and positive word of mouth. By solving guests’ pain points, guests become the museum’s champions and recommend the museum to friends and family.
Because of this, MoPA receives excellent feedback on Net Promoter Score surveys, indicating that guests are very likely to recommend MoPA to friends and family. Because of this, they rarely spend money on advertising and acquiring new guests due to the satisfaction of existing guests. Instead, they reinvest their marketing dollars back into the guest experience and have found this to be the most sustainable way to grow.
RELATED: Read how ROLLER helps attractions achieve the Guest Experience Flywheel
Focus on team enablement & training
Max stresses that “Everything starts with our people” and that MoPA comprises passionate and smart individuals, including qualified teachers, occupational therapists, and dance and movement specialists. Putting them in an environment with beautiful and engaging exhibits and giving them the tools they need to create fantastic interactions with guests creates the best opportunity for success.
MoPA spends a lot of time upskilling the team on the learning experiences available at MoPA to ensure that the exhibits and activities resonate best with the guest and that the guest walks away feeling a true sense of education and personalization of their experience. Recently, MoPA hired a head of learning to help facilitate these initiatives considering its importance to achieving the mission.
Effortlessly manage bookings & capacity
There are multiple ways that attractions can manage capacity. On one end, guests can purchase neither date-specific nor time-specific admission, offering the highest degree of flexibility for guests because they can come today, tomorrow, or a year from now. As long as they arrive during hours of operation, they are granted entry.
Next, tickets can be date-specific, meaning the guest must select the specific day they will visit, and the ticket is only valid on that day. However, the option that gives the venue the most control is timed or session-based entry, which requires guests to select a date and time to arrive at the venue. This is most popular in venues that need greater control over capacity.
However, whichever route operators choose to go down must be backed by a strong booking system. Using ROLLER systems and having the ability to create custom time-blocked sessions with ease, MoPA has taken an approach Max refers to as seeking “comfy capacity.” Instead of sessions in blocks of one hour, MoPA offers three to four segments of the day when guests can visit, with each segment lasting two hours. For instance, guests visiting during the week can book a morning, midday, or afternoon timeslot to visit. That means that guests visiting in the midday or afternoon timeframe get the same experience as if they arrived at the opening.
This type of model gives MoPA multiple benefits. One benefit is that the guest experience is more comfortable because the venue controls the crowds and ensures the museum is never too busy. Additionally, because they offer distinct segments of the day that essentially involve closing and reopening, their overall daily capacity is substantially higher, allowing MoPA to achieve higher attendance levels without negatively impacting the guest experience.
You can check out our interview with Max here or our MoPA case study here to learn how ROLLER helps MoPA incorporate the latest technology at their venues and ensure every guest has an equally amazing experience.
