Guests have endless options when it comes to where they spend their time (and dollars). Providing an exceptional guest experience can help your attraction venue stand out from the pack.
But how exactly? Well, think about your own preferences as a consumer. The better your experience with a brand, the more likely you are to develop an affinity for it and become an advocate and a repeat customer. That’s what you want to do in your own business. Create experiences that are so good guests can’t help but come back (driving repeat revenue in the process) and tell their friends to come too.
It makes a lot of sense to better understand what your guests think you’ve done well and where there are opportunities for improvement so you can lock in their loyalty and keep your customer acquisition costs down.
Read on, and we’ll give you a list of how to do just that — backed by hundreds of thousands of guest data points.
How to drive guest satisfaction and revenue growth
By actively listening to and implementing guest feedback, venues can prioritize where to improve and ultimately enhance the guest experience.
When analyzing data collected from ROLLER’s Guest Experience Score (GX Score) over the last year, we discovered some key themes among guest feedback that impacted all venues around the globe and provided the greatest opportunities for improvement and continued business success.
1. Enhance food and beverage options
The need to enhance food and beverage (F&B) options has been a consistent theme in the guest feedback we analyzed and proves to be a significant global trend for all attraction and leisure industries. In and of itself, F&B offerings are a great way to increase average spend per head, especially when packaged together as part of a deal or promotion.
And by providing more variety and additional food options, venues cater to a more diverse range of guest preferences and could also see an increase in the time spent at the venue and spend per guest. Whether you’re a playcenter catering to toddlers who always want more snacks from their parents or are a Family Entertainment Center (FEC) that targets a slightly older demographic, providing guests with the opportunity to have a more substantive meal increases the likelihood that they will stay in your venue longer and spend more money.
2. Prioritize customer service by providing comprehensive staff training
Another common feedback theme is recognizing the importance of customer service in the overall guest experience. Some of you may have experienced attending an attractions venue where a frontline staff member was stuck fumbling at the POS, and some of you may have been that person yourself, watching the queue get bigger and bigger with each press of a button. The better equipped your team is both on the tools that they use and the products and services you provide, the better they can allocate their time to high-value guest interactions that drive satisfaction and loyalty.
By equipping staff members with powerful, easy-to-use tools and ongoing knowledge on how to service your guests best, venues can consistently deliver superior experiences. The result is positive word-of-mouth referrals and repeat visitation. That means more revenue for your business!
3. Efficiently manage and optimize your venue's facilities
Efficiently managing facilities is another critical aspect of enhancing the guest experience. Guest feedback related to facilities management is generally concerned with how well-maintained the venue is in general, excessive queues at check-in, dirty tables in the cafe, or confusion around how a party is run.
This feedback allows venues to streamline operations, optimize resource allocation, and reduce wait times for guests. By creating a seamless and hassle-free experience, venues can maximize guest enjoyment and minimize potential friction points.
Effective, intuitive, modern guest feedback tools help you grow
So now that you know the specific areas that venues, in general, benefit most from improving, how do you ensure that you continue to stay abreast of your guests' sentiments about your particular venue?
As we know, guest preferences are constantly changing, so it is imperative to have systems that take the hard work out of collecting, managing, and analyzing your guest feedback so you can stay up to date with less effort. More often than not, feedback collection is HARD and time intensive. It’s one of those things that gets pushed to the side or put into the “too hard” and “not now” buckets.
And we get it. After all, you have to figure out the right questions to ask, the right time to send them, and the right delivery method to get you the best response rates. Even after doing all that work, you still have to analyze the collected data to make the best informed decisions.
The Guest Experience Score
ROLLER introduced the Guest Experience Score (GX Score) in December 2021. Since then, we’ve helped hundreds of businesses capture, analyze, and action their guest feedback to continue to improve the experience they offer.
GX Score is a powerful tool that automatically collects and analyzes guest feedback for you. With this data, you’ll know exactly what your guests loved about your venue and where there’s room for improvement.
GX Score customers saw a 27% increase in guest satisfaction
Over 13 months, we analyzed ROLLER customers using the Guest Experience Score with a substantial number of responses per month, and the results were astounding! Each customer is unique — some saw a steady increase in results over the 13-month period, others saw ups and downs over time, and some saw a significant jump after the 1-year mark.
On average, customers' scores rose higher and higher each month, and they saw a 27% increase in their GX Score after using the tool for 13 months!
The GX Score yields 67% higher response rates than average survey tools
Unlike other standard survey tools, GX Score automatically collects guest feedback by seamlessly integrating ROLLER and guest booking data. It sends surveys at the perfect time (straight after a guest visit), and it asks meaningful questions specifically designed for the attractions industry so you get a clear picture of your guests' experience every time they visit.
Then, based on the survey responses, the tool will calculate a personalized ‘GX Score’ for your venue. The more positive responses you receive — the higher your score will climb! These features and more are why the GX Score receives such high response rates from guests.
GX Score industry benchmarks feature clearly shows where time can be best spent to boost business growth
In July 2022, we released the Guest Experience dashboard into the platform. This powerful analytics tool aggregates response data and provides insights into:
- How guest sentiment is trending over time
- Which areas of the experience guests think need the most improvement,
- Which areas of the experience guests love, and why
- Performance of individual staff party hosts
We also released industry benchmarks in February 2023, allowing operators to see exactly how their venue compares against a global standard or their specific region. These benchmarks clearly show how your venue compares against the industry benchmark and where time can be best spent to grow your business.
This data-driven approach enables businesses to identify areas of improvement, track performance, and make data-backed decisions that lead to tangible improvements.
Comprehensive data leads to actionable insights and protects your reputation
ROLLER displays GX Score data in an easy-to-digest format, showing operators at a glance where they’re excelling and where there’s room for improvement. The tool illustrates invaluable insights into guest preferences, pain points, and overall satisfaction. 
The tool can also notify operators immediately when a guest leaves a negative review — ensuring they can contact the guest immediately to remedy the situation (and hopefully before leaving the same negative review on a 3rd party site such as Google or Facebook).
This real-time feedback loop enables venues to proactively adapt and make informed operational and strategic decisions to refine their experience, resulting in an overall improved guest experience. It is also invaluable in safeguarding venues' online reputation and brand.
Read this next: How To Use Guest Feedback To Grow Your Business
Experience the benefits of the GX Score
ROLLER has helped venues more easily prioritize improving their guest experience. Through our data-driven and actionable insights, ROLLER has helped our customers achieve a remarkable 27% increase in guest satisfaction.
From optimizing food and beverage options to delivering exceptional customer service and utilizing advanced analytics, ROLLER empowers venues to bring more happiness and joy to their staff and guest experiences and foster long-term guest loyalty. Want to learn more about the Guest Experience Score? Contact us for more information!
Read this next: Find new guests without lifting a finger using our automated GX Score tool
