5 things to consider when introducing additional activities to your venues

Whilst most family entertainment centres often start out with one focus offering, such as a trampoline park or a climbing centre, a trend we’ve begun to see over the past 24 months is the expansion of parks to become multi-activity venues. On a recent Fun Spot webinar we attended, they also commented on this trend, referring to businesses like this as adventure parks.

From our own research, we know that introducing new activities can be a great way to boost revisitation rate – a key metric for FECs.

There are a couple of reasons why businesses are expanding this way, as opposed to just building a new trampoline section or further climbing walls, using the example above:

1) Adding a completely different element of entertainment creates intrigue within your customer base and broadens your appeal

2) Customers are likely to stay longer in your venue if they can go from a trampoline session onto something completely different

3) More time at a venue means they’re also more likely to eat at your venue

However introducing a new activity can be a daunting task, so we put together a few pointers for you to consider before you implement additional activities to your venue.

Do your research

You should carry out market research to determine what would be the biggest hit with your target market, through online research and surveys. What you find out from this may surprise you, for example you may find that a ninja-warrior course would be the most popular, or a bowling lane could make the most sense from a revenue potential as it can appeal to a broader age range than traditional activities associated with entertainment centres, like when our customer Innoflate introduced their own bowling lanes.

Keep it on brand

Introducing a new activity that doesn’t fit your brand could potentially confuse customers, so we recommend that the design and marketing of it fits in with your current brand.

So let’s say you currently have a trampoline park that might be space themed and your research and knowledge indicates a laser-tag attraction would be a hit – why not market it as an alien vs human laser battle story, keeping the colours and design in line with your current brand offering. You’d be surprised how much strong storytelling can resonate with customers.

Booking and managing your activities

Adding new activities to your offering obviously adds a level complexity when it comes to booking and managing your venues. There are a couple of things you’ll need from your booking and management system when it comes to managing your multi activity venue:

Scalability – Can your current solution grow with you?
Ease of use – Can you easily update and manage your new activity?
CRM – Can you easily view and manage your customers, viewing who has enjoyed which activities?
Marketing – Does your current solution allow you to market your new activity, or integrate with a solution that can?
Reporting – Can you get full insight into every aspect of your business and how the new activity is performing and impacting business?

Of course there are many other points to consider when introducing further activities, but we think the 5 above are the core 5 areas you need to be considering when evaluating if your booking and management solution is good enough for your business goals.

Marketing your new activity

As alluded to above, marketing will be imperative as you look to get business into your new activity. If you have a solid contact database on your CRM, you should have a pretty good understanding of who may be most likely to be interested in the new activity with targeted marketing. Obviously making as much noise on social media is also key, as well as having it listed clearly on your website with keywords to help it get discovered by search engines and subsequently people looking online to find things to do in your area.

Hire the right people

Finally, but possibly most importantly, is that as your business grows so will your staff and you’ll want to ensure you’re hiring the right people.

If you’re introducing a new feature that may have a stronger need for attention to health and safety than your current activities do, it makes sense to look for staff who have a proven track record of working in an environment where health and safety is of utmost importance.

Having a good team who know how to treat your customers will leave such a positive lasting impression on them, that it’s worth spending a bit more to hire the right people.

We hope this gives you some helpful insight so you can plan the next stage of your expansion as a business, and we’d love to talk about how we can help support you through it – drop [email protected] an email or get in touch via the form below.