Are booking systems here to stay?

Booking a day out has become part of our social life; spontaneity has been lost to an extent. But if you're a visitor attraction, should you be thinking about keeping your booking system into the future?

Last August I wrote a blog about booking systems and their role in managing visitor numbers. I'm a huge advocate of this approach having worked in a property where the experience was sometimes ruined for people at peak times.

There was resistance to introducing these systems at the National Trust and understandably so at a member-led organisation, but Covid has forced everyone's hand. Many attractions, small and large, have now experienced the challenges and benefits and and I wonder what the long term strategy will be?

There are challenges. What happens when you allocate a set number of tickets, you get booked out, then it rains and half the people don't visit? How do you manage spontaneous visitors who will turn up expecting to come in when you're fully booked? What happens when the booking system breaks down? All of these scenarios impact on your income and experience - both critical to every attraction.

But what about the benefits? The ability to manage numbers at peak times and maintaining a high quality experience for all; the opportunity to drive off-peak visits; capturing visitor data that enables you to learn more about your audiences and talk to them; being able to match your operational resource to the level of bookings. All of these are also vital to all attractions.

As a visitor I do miss spontaneity, but I enjoy the security of knowing places won't be overcrowded, that we'll feel safe and be able to access what we need without huge queues and actually, it's more likely to make me go somewhere if I've booked, even if there's no charge attached to pre-booking.

I think the benefits outweigh the challenges. You can overcome the difficulties by having a hybrid model and flexing your numbers, but you can't necessarily replicate the benefits in such a simple way. It will be interesting to see what decisions attractions make moving forward.

Think about how your operating model supports great visitor experiences and the role booking systems might play in this. I can help you reach the right decisions for your attraction.