Unleashing Growth: A Comprehensive Guide for Attraction Venue Operators and Owners to Expand Their Business
In the dynamic landscape of the attraction venue industry, pursuing growth is crucial for operators and owners. The decision to expand an attraction venue goes beyond mere physical enlargement; it’s a strategic move aimed at tapping into new markets, broadening the customer base, and elevating the brand to new heights.
This comprehensive guide is designed to provide in-depth insights and actionable strategies, facilitating the expansion process for sustainable growth and heightened success in a fiercely competitive market.
The Importance of Business Expansion
Expansion is not a luxury but a necessity in an industry that thrives on novelty and excitement. Beyond increasing physical space, the strategic expansion of an attraction venue is about exploring new horizons, reaching diverse demographics, and evolving to meet the ever-changing demands of the audience. Growth isn’t just a number; it’s a journey that pushes the venue towards greater success and recognition.
Potential Challenges and Benefits
Growing a business comes with its fair share of challenges, but the benefits make it worthwhile.
For starters, developing a business is challenging. There’s an array of operational complexities to consider, and you must have efficient systems, processes, and technologies in place to support our growth. Can your point-of-sale system, staff scheduling tools, and inventory management all scale with your business? Are you prepared for construction delays? Is your insurance in order? How about the staff at your disposal – do you have the personnel required to manage multiple venues? And, of course, how are you funding it all? There’s a lot to consider!
A modern, all-in-one, cloud-based software solution can help you translate your current success into growth as it scales with you. Online features such as progressive checkouts can boost sales and ensure guests have a frictionless purchasing experience. The right technology can reduce admin by as much as 50% by streamlining operations, which saves valuable time and reduces labor costs.;
Another key consideration is the market you operate in. Depending on the competitive landscape, it may make sense to identify a new location to expand to overcome saturation in your current environment. Finally, there are financial risks that come with any business venture. Just as starting a business in the first place takes careful planning, you must ensure you are in a financially stable position to invest resources into a growth plan.
Considering the various challenges of expanding your business, it’s essential to factor in the potential benefits. First and foremost is the apparent opportunity to increase revenue. So, you should consider how to drive more revenue through various revenue streams to boost overall performance.
With expansion, you also have the opportunity to reach new audiences and customers. Consider how you can diversify your attractions to remain relevant for existing customers while diversifying to draw in new demographics and develop loyalty with a larger audience base. Similarly, business expansion is an opportunity to boost the power of your brand. With a stronger brand, you may see more significant gains on investments such as merchandise and special events.
Assessing Current Operations
Current Performance Analysis
Before jumping into an aggressive expansion plan, take the time to analyze your current business performance. A thorough analysis of your current operations is an ideal building block in any plans for future growth. You will want to analyze all your key performance indicators and take stock of what works well and what can be improved. Evaluate trends across your visitor numbers, revenue, customer reviews, staffing needs, etc. This step offers opportunities to optimize your existing operations while underpinning how your expanded business can be successful.
No performance analysis would be complete for an attraction venue without identifying your top attractions. What currently draws the most visitors and drives the most revenue for your business? Learning how to replicate that success with any new expansion is critical. At the same time, you’ll gain an understanding of which areas are underperforming and should be avoided as you grow into the next phase of your business.
Market Research
Now that you thoroughly understand your current operations, it’s time to take a deep look into the market. What trends or potential gaps in the market can you take advantage of to underpin your expansion? Beyond simply duplicating what you already offer, ensure that you expand into a new market or supplement your current market with attractions that meet a clear need for customers in the area.
Part of that research means looking closely at your competition. Look at the other venues or attractions in your market and evaluate what you can offer that they can’t. Or, if there is simply too much competition for too small of a market, it might be time to expand into a new market where you can become a premier destination that existing entities won’t crowd out.
Planning for Expansion
Setting Clear Objectives
Beyond simply wanting to increase revenue, it’s important to set clear and measurable objectives at the outset of any successful expansion strategy. Objectives such as target revenue, the number of guests served, and total merchandise sold will help you determine your approach and give you a benchmark to measure against as you move forward. These objectives should align with your vision for your future business and serve as indicators of success.
Developing a Comprehensive Business Plan
With clear and measurable objectives, you can begin developing a comprehensive business plan. The goals identified should inform the details of your business plan. This plan will include revenue and cost projections, marketing or branding strategies, and considerations around managing your operations – from staffing levels to technology choices. Being realistic in your business plan is paramount, so you should re-evaluate any potential risks your new venture may face and outline strategies to minimize or overcome them. Importantly, your business plan will be a powerful tool to share with any stakeholders you partner with in your new growth venture.
Marketing Strategies for Expansion
Digital Marketing Essentials
As with launching your original business, a sound digital marketing approach will be essential to growing your business. When planning an expansion, you can leverage your existing brand strength and enhance it to coincide with your new venture. Startby ensuring your website is optimized and that your point of sale experience can seamlessly lead guests through to your new offerings. Ensure your social media channels are up to date and actively integrated into your web platform. Consider how you might want to leverage email marketing platforms to promote your expanded business. Whatever mix of digital marketing tools you choose to deploy, ensure that each channel is optimized, that you have a sound strategy, and that each tactic supports the other for maximum brand consistency and strength.
SEO Best Practices
One important digital marketing tool to consider is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO is a fundamental tool to drive online visibility for your business. It also happens to be free, although you can certainly invest in resources to help you become more familiar with the practice. Simply put, SEO is about choosing the right keywords and metadata to include on your website so that your page appears in organic search engine results. Of course, including the name of your business is a good start, but consider what words potential customers might type into a search engine if they are looking for an attraction venue, then optimize your website accordingly. Remember, SEO is an ongoing effort, so you cannot simply set your keywords and data once and move on—be sure to check on your results and optimize as needed.
Paid Advertising Strategies
To balance your organic search strategy, consider how much you want to invest in paid advertising services online. Paid advertising can be a great tool as you expand your business. Options like Google Ads and social media platforms make it easy to get started with minimal time or investment. As with your organic search process, you must do some work upfront to determine exactly what kind of traffic you want to target with your ads. After all, a paid ad is only effective if it’s displayed in front of the right user. With budgeting considerations and targeting strategies in mind, you can deploy an effective paid advertising campaign to reach the right audience at the right time to drive them toward your new business venture.
Enhancing Visitor Experience
Diversifying Attractions
Expanding your business isn’t simply offering more of what you already have; it’s an opportunity to enhance the experience you offer visitors with new, different, and relevant attractions. Innovation and excitement are key components to consider in diversifying your offerings to capture the attention of new customers and offer existing and loyal fans something new to experience. Whether you opt for new technology or unique experiences, diversifying your attractions is an ideal way to boost excitement as you expand your business.
Customer feedback is an obvious component of your business once you are underway, but it can be a valuable source of insight as you plan your expansion as well. Tech solutions, like ROLLER’s Guest Experience Score, can make automatically collecting, analyzing, and actioning your guests’ feedback easy.
However you do it, be sure to review existing feedback and proactively engage customers as you plan your expansion to gain their insights into what they love about your current offerings and what they might be interested in experiencing in the future. It’s just as important to learn what they don’t enjoy or don’t want to see in the future so you can avoid investing your resources into something that will underwhelm potential visitors. This engagement with customers can set your business up to succeed early on and will go a long way toward building loyalty and satisfaction among those who feel their input has been heard.
Operational Considerations
Staff Training and Development
With a clear business plan to work from, marketing strategies, and well-considered and innovative new attractions to offer, it’s time to finalize all the operational considerations necessary to ensure your expanded venture runs smoothly. First and foremost, that means having adequate staffing levels with thorough training and development. Your team is the face of your business. The better trained and developed they are, the more smoothly your business will run and the more confident and helpful they will be in their interactions with guests. They are an extension of you as a venue owner, so they must be every bit as knowledgeable, capable, and passionate about your business as you are.
Technology Integration
With a well-trained and supported staff, you can also take time to ensure your operations utilize tools and technology to help your business run smoothly and improve your productivity.
From your point of sale tool to your inventory management, loyalty programs, business analytics, and more – utilizing modern, integrated technology solutions can save you time, improve customer satisfaction, and ensure your new business succeeds.
Expanding an attraction venue business is a big project. It needs careful planning, a clear vision, and openness to adapt and improve. Assessing current operations, planning well, using effective marketing, enhancing the visitor experience, and staying focused on operational details are key to planning and growing a successful attraction venue.
To learn more about how cloud-based attraction management software can help make your attraction venue expansion a success, schedule a demo with us today.
Overcoming Prospecting Barriers
Dave Sexton is the Director of FEC Development for Betson Enterprises. He joined Betson in 2014 and has over 25 years of experience working on all facets of FEC development, including sales, consultation design & layout.
Alyse is ROLLER’s Senior Manager of Events & Partnerships, based in Savannah, Georgia. Her role involves coordinating, executing, and maximizing ROLLER’s impact on the industry while exhibiting at events, hosting events, and presenting in the industry. From being an operator, to time spent as the FEC liaison at IAAPA, Alyse is very passionate about the leisure/hospitality industry and continues to look for ways to help operators and partners succeed.
