RES E ARC H
Making pre-booking work Encouraging customers to pre-book can mean the best of both worlds: higher revenue and a closer relationship with the guest, says Jon Young
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any attractions moved to pre-booking in response to the pandemic, but doing so risks missing out on spontaneous and disorganised visitors in
an age where customers want flexibility. At consumer and business insight consultancy
BVA BDRC, we conducted research among the UK population, as part of our ClearSight survey, to offer insight into visitor and attractions operator attitudes to pre-booking. Attractions were drawn to pre-booking as lockdowns lifted, because of the need to control numbers under COVID-19 restrictions. The strategy did, however, come with its own issues around no shows. For some operators, these were as high as 30 per cent of all bookings (anecdotally – those that were free and with membership), while fifteen per cent of visitors across the attractions market had ‘no-showed’ in the previous six months. The true number is likely to be higher, as even in an anonymous survey environment, people will feel bad about sharing undesirable behaviour. When asked why they hadn’t turned up, the vast majority stated they were not committed to visiting in the first place. Notably, seven in
photo: ANNIE ARMITAGE / BDRC
10 stated that ‘they had booked more than one
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place to visit and would decide on the day’ or that their intention to visit was ‘always 50/50’. The remainder gave more understandable reasons such as government restrictions (a higher percentage for indoor attractions), Jon Young is a research director at BVA BDRC
attractionsmanagement.com Vol 26 / ISSUE 4
unsuitable weather (higher for outdoor
