# Convious > Convious is the all-in-one commerce platform for theme parks, zoos, and attractions. POS, self-service kiosk, online checkout, and Control Panel, all on one backend. ## Checkout URL: https://www.convious.com/checkout Sell tickets on your own website with Convious Checkout. Dynamic pricing, built-in upsells, and one backend shared with your kiosk and POS. Built for theme parks, zoos, and attractions. ### What is Convious Checkout? The online ticket shop for leisure venues. It embeds on your own website and sells tickets, memberships, and add-ons directly to your guests, powered by the same Convious platform as your kiosk and POS. ### Does it work with our existing website? Yes. One script tag added to your site, and the shop runs inside your own pages on any CMS or site builder. No rebuild needed. ### How is it priced? Commission per sale. You only pay when your guests buy. ### Does it support timeslots and capacity? Yes. Guests book real timeslots with live capacity, shared with your kiosk and POS so you never oversell. ### What is dynamic pricing? Convious adjusts ticket prices within boundaries you set, responding to demand and timing. Guests see fair prices, and visits spread more evenly across your calendar. ### Which payment methods can guests use? All major cards and digital wallets, plus popular local methods depending on your country. ### Which languages does the shop speak? All the major European languages out of the box. We can add more for your guest base. ## POS URL: https://www.convious.com/pos Convious POS is a cloud-first point of sale built for theme parks, zoos, and attractions. Human-centred, on modern hardware, on one platform with checkout and kiosk. ### How does Convious POS pricing work? Pricing is built to scale with how you actually sell. You choose how to pay for the hardware (upfront, or spread across monthly installments), and transaction fees apply only to card payments. Cash sales stay commission-free. ### How long is the Convious POS contract? Contracts start at one year. We’ll walk through the options that fit your venue on a sales call. ### What hardware does the Convious POS run on? The Convious POS runs on the iMin Swan 2 Pro, an Android 15 terminal with an integrated receipt printer. It’s a single-unit, plug-and-play device: plug it in and you’re ready to sell. ### Can I use my existing Windows hardware, scanners, or printers? Existing Windows POS hardware is not supported. The Convious POS is Android-based, but USB barcode scanners can be connected directly. ### How does migration to Convious POS work? Because Convious Checkout, Kiosk, and POS all share one backend, migration is instant for existing Convious partners. Your products, pricing, and setup are already in place, so turning on the POS is a flick of a switch, even if you’re replacing another POS system. ### What payment methods does the Convious POS support? The Convious POS supports cash and card payments out of the box. Custom payment methods like vouchers, invoices, and gift cards can be configured as reconciliation labels, so they appear correctly in end-of-day reports. ### How do refunds work on the Convious POS? Look up the order on the terminal and select the products to refund. ### What end-of-day reports does the Convious POS generate? The Convious POS generates Z reports for end-of-day closing and X reports for mid-shift snapshots. Z reports include payment breakdowns, tax totals, and terminal IDs. Both export as non-editable PDF or CSV. ### Is the Convious POS compliant with local tax regulations? Yes. The Convious POS meets local tax requirements out of the box in most markets, with certified integrations in place for countries with stricter fiscalization regimes (Germany, for example, via Fiskaly for TSE and KassenSichV). Happy to confirm coverage for your specific market on a sales call. ### How is the Convious POS different from a generic retail POS? The Convious POS is built specifically for leisure venues. Time slot ticketing, capacity management, and discount codes are native features, designed in from day one. ### Does the Convious POS integrate with online and kiosk sales? Yes. Convious POS, Checkout (online), and Kiosk share one backend, so every transaction, whether online, self-service kiosk, or in-person, appears in a single reporting dashboard. ### Does the Convious POS integrate with access control and turnstiles? Yes. The Convious POS integrates with a wide range of scanning and access control systems, including Alvarado and Codereadr. ### Can I run Convious POS across multiple locations? Yes, with no limit on the number of venues or terminals. Every location reports into the same unified backend, so multi-site groups see their full operation in one dashboard. ### Does the Convious POS handle food and beverage? Convious POS covers what leisure venues sell most: tickets, memberships, add-ons, and retail. For food and beverage, Convious integrates with MplusKASSA, so your F&B and your ticketing, membership, and retail sales come together on one platform. ### How do staff log in to the Convious POS? Staff log in with a unique PIN tied to their account. Admins manage and update PINs through the Control Panel. ### How much training do staff need? Minimal. Admins take care of configuration through the Control Panel, so cashiers work in an interface that’s intuitive and optimised for speed, efficiency, and error prevention. ### Can I customise the product layout on the Convious POS? Yes. The product grid, category structure, button colours, and tile positioning are all configurable. ### How does end-of-day and shift closing work? Closing the business day in-app triggers a Z report. Cash counting is built in but optional. ### What languages does the Convious POS support? Any language. Both the staff interface and customer receipts can be localised to match your market and your team. ### What support does Convious provide? Year-round on-call support with a clear SLA, so coverage stays the same in January as it does in July. Partners consistently cite the support team as one of the strongest parts of working with Convious, thanks to a proactive, hands-on approach. ### Can I scan and look up online orders at the Convious POS? Yes. Reprinting tickets and receipts, and issuing refunds are available from the same screen. ### How do discount codes work at the Convious POS? Discount codes are entered by typing or scanning, and apply automatically to the correct items. It’s the same logic used in the online checkout, so promotions behave consistently across channels. ## Kiosk URL: https://www.convious.com/kiosk Guests walk up, tap, pay, and go. Convious self-service kiosks sell tickets, upsells, and add-ons with no staff required, fully connected to your online shop and POS. ### How is the kiosk priced? Commission per sale. You only pay when your guests do. No upfront hardware fees, no monthly minimums. ### How fast can we be up and running? The kiosk arrives pre-configured for your venue. Plug it into power and network, and it's ready to sell. ### We're already a Convious partner. What changes? Nothing on your side. Your products, pricing rules, and capacity are already in the platform. The kiosk just becomes another sales channel. ### Does the kiosk handle timeslots? Yes. Guests pick from available timeslots in real time, with capacity respected automatically. ### Can we customise the range of products? Yes. Show only what makes sense at the gate. Hide online-only products. Highlight bundles and upgrades. ### Can guests collect an online order at the kiosk? Yes. Guests scan their QR or enter an order code, and the kiosk prints or sends the ticket. ### Which payment methods are supported? All major cards via the integrated Adyen terminal. Apple Pay and Google Pay. Local methods depending on your country. ### Where does kiosk revenue show up? Alongside your online and POS revenue, in a single Convious Control Panel. Filter by channel for any breakdown you need. ### What support is included? Dedicated account support during onboarding, plus ongoing help when you need it. Same team that supports your online shop. ### Which languages does the kiosk speak? All the major European languages out of the box. We can add more for your guest base. ## Control Panel URL: https://www.convious.com/control-panel Manage pricing, products, marketing, and reporting from one Control Panel, synced with your kiosk, POS, and online shop. ### What is the Convious Control Panel? The Control Panel is the single back office for your venue. You manage pricing, products, marketing, and reporting in one place, kept in sync with your online shop, kiosk, and POS. ### What can I manage from it? Your product catalogue, ticket and membership setup, dynamic-pricing rules, on-site marketing through Engage, and reporting across every sales channel, all from the same place. ### Do I need technical skills to use it? No. The Control Panel balances depth with day-to-day simplicity, so it's operable by the people who run the venue, even one person managing everything alone. ### Does it cover all my sales channels? Yes. Your online shop, kiosk, and POS all report into the same Control Panel, so revenue, conversion, and channel mix sit together in one honest view. ### Can I export my data? Yes. Day and shift closings, end-of-day reports, and finance-ready exports are built in, so your numbers leave the system without spreadsheet gymnastics. ### What is Pulse? Pulse is a coming layer on the Control Panel. It turns the reporting you already have into a forward look: footfall and revenue forecasts, measured against your targets, with recommendations drawn from your own business rules. ## Dynamic Pricing URL: https://www.convious.com/dynamic-pricing Convious dynamic pricing adjusts your ticket prices automatically within the floor and ceiling you set, responding to demand, timing, and capacity. One rule set across web, kiosk, and POS. ### What is dynamic pricing? Dynamic pricing lets Convious adjust your ticket prices automatically in response to demand, timing, and how much capacity is left for a given date. Each date settles on one clear price, always inside the floor and ceiling you set. ### Will different guests pay different prices? Prices vary by date, not by who is looking. Guests booking a quiet weekday may see a lower price than guests booking a peak weekend, but every guest sees the same single, transparent price for the date they pick, with no hidden fees. ### Is this fair to guests? Yes. Prices stay within the limits you set, and quieter days are cheaper to help fill them. Guests who book flexibly are rewarded, and everyone sees one clear price for their chosen date before they buy. ### Do I lose control of my pricing? No. You set the floor, the ceiling, and your goals. Convious only moves prices inside those boundaries, and you can change the strategy at any time without hand-editing prices day by day. ### Does it work across all my sales channels? Yes. One set of pricing rules applies across your online shop, kiosk, and POS, so a guest sees a consistent price wherever they buy and no channel drifts out of sync. ### Where do I manage dynamic pricing? In the Convious Control Panel, the same place you see the reporting that shows the revenue impact of your pricing strategy. ## Pulse URL: https://www.convious.com/pulse Convious Pulse is the Control Panel's living dashboard: visitors and sales, realised and forecast, paced against your targets, with Convious AI built in. ### What is Convious Pulse? Pulse is the living dashboard inside the Convious Control Panel. It shows your visitors and sales, both realised and forecast, paces sales against the target you set, and puts Convious AI one question away. ### Is Pulse available now? Yes. Pulse is live in the Convious Control Panel today, built on the sales data your online shop, kiosk and POS already report. Book a demo to see it in action. ### Do I need new hardware or a separate tool? No. Pulse runs in the same Control Panel you already use, and it draws on the sales data your online shop, kiosk, and POS already report. There is nothing new to install. ### Where do the forecasts come from? From your own data. Pulse reads your historical and current sales across every Convious channel and projects visitors and sales forward from that, so the forecast reflects how your venue actually trades. ### Can I set my own targets? Yes. You set the sales target Pulse paces against, straight from the sales card, and every day shows whether you are ahead of it or behind. ### Does Pulse replace the reporting I have today? No. It builds on it. Your channel reporting in the Control Panel stays exactly as it is; Pulse adds the forward-looking view and the recommendations on top. ## MCP URL: https://www.convious.com/mcp Convious MCP is the first Model Context Protocol server in the attractions industry. Connect Claude or ChatGPT to manage pricing and query live sales analytics across every sales channel, with dry-run previews before any change. ## Ticketing for theme parks URL: https://www.convious.com/industries/theme-parks From school-holiday visits to a day on the rides, bring advance bookings and gate sales together. Convious gives your team one place to manage tickets, passes and capacity. ## Ticketing for water parks URL: https://www.convious.com/industries/water-parks Make the most of your opening season, from quieter weekdays to school-holiday demand. Bring ticket sales, capacity and pricing together with Convious, before guests reach the slides. ## Ticketing for zoos URL: https://www.convious.com/industries/zoos Help families plan their next animal encounter, whether it is their first visit or a regular day out. Manage online bookings, memberships and admissions on the same Convious platform. ## How La Ferme aux Crocodiles - Réserve Tropicale transformed ticket sales with Convious URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-la-ferme-aux-crocodiles-transformed-ticket-sales-with-convious [La Ferme aux Crocodiles - Réserve Tropicale](https://www.lafermeauxcrocodiles.com/en/), the largest crocodile park in Europe, has seen an impressive increase in attendance, welcoming thousands of visitors every year. Yet as the number of visitors increases, they realize that their system has limitations, making it harder to showcase all available offers and predict attendance. This is when they realised they needed to change and partnered up with Convious to create a more flexible and user-friendly online ticketing experience. Now, they managed to increase conversion rates by over 25%, while spreading visitors more evenly throughout the day, ensuring an unforgettable experience for every visitor. ## Find out more about their journey to transform ticket sales, including: - Why they decided to update their existing system - What Convious features helped them achieve success - How the changes have shaped their guest experience so far - What is their focus for the future ## How Art Explora Festival optimized the visitor experience with Convious URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-art-explora-festival-optimized-the-visitor-experience As the [Art Explora Festival](https://www.artexplora.org/en/festival) was about to set sail and start their journey to make art and culture accessible to all, they needed a partner who could join them and support this journey. That’s where Convious stepped in. With a range of ticketing and reporting solutions designed for the cultural sector, Convious has played a vital role in transforming the visitor experience and becoming a true partner in their mission. Discover Art Explora’s story including exclusive tips into visitor engagement and using technology to optimize your visitor experience in this new case study. ## Download the full case study to learn how Convious supported Art Explora Festival: - **Optimize operations** with detailed insights into show-up rates and smart capacity planning to ensure a flawless visitor experience. - **Empower generosity** by offering easy-to-use donation options, helping visitors contribute to the foundation’s meaningful mission. - **Cultivate lasting connections** through automated marketing tools that keep visitors informed, engaged, and inspired throughout their journey. ## How FlyView Paris improved conversion rates with the help of Convious’ AI-Powered Dynamic Pricing URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-flyview-paris-improved-conversion-rates-with-ai-powered-dynamic-pricing Learn how [FlyView Paris](https://www.flyview360.com/en) enhanced their conversion rates and revenue by using Convious' AI-powered Dynamic Pricing solution. The team noticed that while their website attracted plenty of visitors, many were not completing their purchases, leading them to look for a better way to improve conversions. Sophie Lemonde, Marketing & Sales Director at FlyView Paris, shares their experience, including the team's first impressions and the results they saw after implementing the solution. ## Get your free copy of this case study to discover - FlyView’s **initial view** on dynamic pricing and conversions - How FlyView increased their **conversion rate with over 6%** - A comparison of **various Dynamic Pricing strategies**, their benefits, and implementation ## How Jaderpark boosted season ticket sales with Convious' email campaigns URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-jaderpark-boosted-season-ticket-sales-with-convious-email-campaigns The biggest challenge for [Jaderpark](http://www.jaderpark.de), was visitors registration: it didn't work in their system and they didn't want to take any risks. They simply weren't able to find anything from the local providers, which weren't specialised in the day-to-day running of a recreational establishment. With Convious they found the perfect partner to help them get back on track after the pandemic. They had to figure out how to get people back in the park and increase their sales. **They needed a plan.** Jaderpark is a zoo and theme park located in Germany where guests can experience exciting animal encounters as well as thrilling attractions. Andy Ludewigt, managing director of the park, explains how Convious helped boosting season passes sales with email campaigns. Download for free now ## What to expect in this success story? ##### You will find out how Convious helped Jaderpark to: - **Boost their season pass sales** with email campaigns - **Optimise the opening rate** of their emails with A/B tests - **Increase their visibility** - **Keep the link** with their visitors alive during off-season - Sell **vouchers and coupon codes** the right way ## How Amarante Water Park maximises revenue all season long with dynamic ticket pricing URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-amarante-water-park-maximises-revenue-all-season-long-with-convious How to spread volume evenly throughout the season while still maximising revenue? That was the question for [Parque Aquatico Amarante](https://parqueaquaticoamarante.com/), the largest mountain **waterpark** in the Iberian Peninsula, as they were approaching high season. Making sure they **grow online sales**, without disappointing their visitors was a tricky task, but they found the perfect solution: **dynamic pricing.** Using the Convious **eCommerce** module and the dynamic pricing feature allowed them to increase their revenue by more than 80% compared with the pre-pandemic year 2019 online sales, among many more. And you can read all about it in this new success story! Download for free now ## What to expect in this success story? ##### You will find out how Convious helped Parque Aquatico Amarante to: - **Spread their volume** more evenly throughout the entire season - **Earn more** without disappointing their visitors - Find the right **pricing strategy** Would you like to learn more about the impact of Dynamic Pricing on a leisure and tourism business? Read our [free eBook](/eblog/guide-to-dynamic-pricing-for-the-experience-industry) on the topic! ## How Movie Park Germany took control of their visitor flow with Convious Crowd Control URL: https://www.convious.com/stories/how-movie-park-took-control-of-their-visitor-flow > Quick answer: Convious Crowd Control is a visitor flow management solution for theme parks that lets guests register in advance, book fixed-day and time-slot entry, and receive their tickets directly on their mobile phones. Movie Park Germany used it to manage capacity, eliminate front-gate queues, and run its 300,000-visitor Halloween Horror Festival, increasing guest satisfaction while redirecting spend towards restaurants and live shows. Visitor flow management is the technology-led practice of controlling how many guests enter a theme park and when, to prevent overcrowding, reduce queues, and protect the guest experience. Located in Bottrop, in the heart of the Ruhr area, [Movie Park Germany](https://www.movieparkgermany.de/) welcomes around 1.4 million visitors every year, despite being closed in winter. Crowd Control matters because theme parks face a structural trade-off: higher occupancy means longer waiting times, and queuing guests spend less on food, retail, and attractions. Michael Höfig, Head of Sales at Movie Park Germany, explains how Convious helped eliminate queues at its most popular attractions, increased guest satisfaction, and turned visitor flow management into a revenue driver by giving guests more time to spend in restaurants and live shows. Proving that lower occupancy and shorter waiting times can coexist with stronger turnover. [See how Crowd Control would work for your park](/demo) ## The Challenge: Capacity Limits and Unreachable Guests When capacity restrictions hit, Movie Park Germany faced two problems at once. First, daily capacity was cut from a maximum of 25,000 guests to just 8,000, and the park continued operating cautiously at that reduced level. Second, a third of its tickets were sold through resellers as undated, unregistered admissions. Guests simply showed up whenever they liked, which left the park unable to forecast visitor numbers or contact those guests in advance. > "The weather has always played a big role," explains Michael Höfig, Head of Sales at Movie Park Germany. "In the past, we had no way of contacting our customers who had bought undated tickets online." That made upselling and advance planning difficult. The park needed a fast way to register every visitor, manage strict capacity limits, and stop people from queuing at the ticket booth, without disrupting its existing systems. ## The Solution: Convious Crowd Control Convious Crowd Control is a visitor flow management module that integrates advanced registration, fixed-day booking, and time-slot reservations into a park's existing booking and website system. Movie Park Germany already knew Convious through its partnerships with other parks operated by the same company, and turned to the Dutch technology firm to integrate the solution quickly and flexibly. The result was a system where guests register in advance, book a fixed day, and gain direct entry on arrival using a mobile phone ticket. With a few clicks, guests can also reserve parking and time slots for popular attractions, or change a reservation when plans shift. ### Reaching Every Guest: Personalised Pre-Visit Communication Advance registration gave the park a direct line to every guest, including the reseller customers it previously could not reach. > "Suddenly, we were able to inform our guests about promotions and special offers in advance," says Höfig. "This makes it a lot easier for us to upsell before their visit. And since they are registered with us, we can now provide accurate weather forecasts to all our guests, even those whom we previously could not reach because they had undated tickets or season passes." This turned a contact-tracing requirement into a personalisation channel spanning the full visitor journey: pre-visit offers, on-the-day mobile entry, and ongoing communication. ### Eliminating Queues with Time-Slot Booking Time-slot booking lets guests reserve a fixed arrival window for high-demand attractions, so they arrive when it suits them rather than joining a queue. Movie Park Germany proved the model at scale during its Halloween Horror Festival, the largest event of its kind in Europe, drawing 300,000 horror fans across October. > "Without Convious Crowd Control, we would probably have had to cancel our Halloween festival," says Höfig. For indoor attractions like the Hostel Maze and Chupacabra House (the festival's biggest draws), the park offered 15-minute time slots from 6pm to 10pm. Guests checked availability online, booked a slot, and arrived with near-zero waiting time, enjoying the attractions in small groups. > > "Our guests love it, because it means hardly any waiting time. And for us, it means full compliance and more reliable planning." ## See it work for your venue Convious Crowd Control helps theme parks, zoos, and museums manage visitor flow, eliminate queues, and turn capacity management into a revenue opportunity. Get in touch with our team to see how it would work for your attraction. > “With Convious, we always have a fixed contact person who can be reached even on weekends, which is when we are busiest. As a theme park, that’s exactly the kind of reliability we need from our partners.” > – Michael Höfig, Head of Sales, Movie Park Germany Convious is an AI-driven, all-in-one e-commerce platform specifically designed for the leisure and attractions industry, such as theme parks, zoos, and museums. It enables operators to manage ticketing, dynamic pricing, and visitor engagement in one place to increase conversions and enhance the guest experience from booking to visit. With our eCom, Self-service Kiosks, and Point-of-Sale solutions, we turn first-time visitors into long-time loyals. ## How visitors find attractions through ChatGPT in 2026 URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/how-visitors-find-attractions-through-chatgpt-in-2026 If the words "AI marketing" make you want to close the tab, stay with us. This is not a tech lecture, and you do not need to change everything. The change is smaller and more familiar than it sounds. Here is what is happening, in plain terms. Some visitors planning a family day out have started asking ChatGPT instead of, or alongside, searching Google. They type something like "best theme park near Manchester for young kids", and ChatGPT replies with a few suggestions in a sentence or two each. If your park is one of the names it mentions, you are in front of that family at the very start of their planning. ![Screenshot 2026-06-25 at 10.36.00](/blog/how-visitors-find-attractions-through-chatgpt-in-2026/inline-1.png) So this is not about chasing the latest thing. It is about making sure that when someone does ask an AI where to take the kids on Saturday, your park has a fair chance of being mentioned. And the good news is that the things that help with ChatGPT are mostly the same things that have always helped you: clear information and happy visitors talking about you. ## What does and does not count There is a lot of noise about AI marketing, and most of it overcomplicates things. For an attraction park, it comes down to a short, sensible list. Here is what actually moves the needle, and what to ignore. ![Screenshot 2026-06-25 at 10.37.46](/blog/how-visitors-find-attractions-through-chatgpt-in-2026/inline-2.png) Look at the left-hand column again. There is no jargon in it. It is the same advice a sensible person would have given you ten years ago: be clear about what you offer, and look after your reputation. ChatGPT has simply made that advice matter even more. > ChatGPT cannot visit your park. It can only repeat what the web already says about you. So the question is: what does the web say? ## AI loves reviews ### If you do one thing, look after your reviews This is the part to underline. When ChatGPT decides which parks to recommend, reviews carry enormous weight. They are independent, they are recent, and they describe the real experience in the words of real visitors. That is exactly the kind of evidence an AI trusts when it picks who to name. Think about it from ChatGPT's side. It will not recommend a park it cannot vouch for. A wall of recent, detailed, positive reviews is the clearest possible signal that your park is real, well run and worth a family's Saturday. A thin or stale review page leaves it with nothing to stand on, so it names a competitor who has more to show. And reviews do double duty. The same reviews that help ChatGPT name you are the ones that convince a parent to compare two parks on Google. You are not doing AI work and reputation work separately. They are the same work. Best of all, this is something you already know how to do. Asking happy visitors to leave a review, replying to the ones you get, keeping your Travel Media Platform (like TripAdvisor) page current, these are not new skills. They are good hospitality, and they happen to be the strongest thing you can do for AI visibility too. ## Google and ChatGPT, side by side You do not have to choose between them, and you should not try to. They sit next to each other in how a family plans a day out, and the same groundwork serves both. ![Screenshot 2026-06-24 at 16.22.59](/blog/how-visitors-find-attractions-through-chatgpt-in-2026/inline-3.png) Notice that both columns rest on the same foundations: clear facts and strong reviews. You are not running two campaigns. You are making sure one reputation shows up in two places. ## Your one action this week ### Ask for reviews, on purpose Forget everything else for now. This week, set up one simple, repeatable way to ask happy visitors for a review. That single habit does more for your AI visibility, and your ordinary reputation, than anything else on this page. Pick one moment to ask: a follow-up email after a visit, a sign at the exit with a QR code, or a line from staff at the gate. Point people to one place, most likely Tripadvisor or Google, so your reviews build up where they count. Reply to the reviews that come in, the good and the critical. It shows you are present and real. That is the whole task. One way to ask, every week, from now on. Everything else can wait. When you are ready to make the rest of your booking and visitor experience just as clear and consistent, that is where we can help. ## Key trends for 2025: Insights to keep your visitor attraction on top URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/key-trends-for-2025-insights-to-keep-your-visitor-attraction-on-top Whether you're a theme park operator, museum director, or any other leisure industry professional, this webinar will provide you with actionable insights to ensure your attraction thrives in the years to come. ### What to expect in this webinar? - Explore the latest trends and innovations in the leisure industry. - Understand how to leverage technology to enhance guest experiences. - Learn sustainable practices that can future-proof your attraction. - Discover strategies to meet evolving consumer demands. - Gain insights into how top attractions are adapting to stay ahead. ## What is “API-First” and why does it matter for your venue? URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/what-is-an-api-first-approach In the bustling world of theme parks, zoos, and indoor venues, diversity in suppliers for various services and products is the norm. From the ride manufacturer(s) to the F&B provider, each supplier operates independently, and no interaction is required. However, when we look at the IT infrastructure that powers these venues, the story is different. Unlike physical suppliers, software solutions underpinning venue operations *must* communicate and work together harmoniously to ensure a seamless visitor experience. Without this communication, guests will face disjointed services, leading to frustration and a poor visitor experience. Here are some examples that we have come across: - Day tickets or season passes sold online that don’t get synced to access management solutions, leading to long queues at the entrance as operators need to manually check every visitor. This not only frustrates guests who have to wait longer but also overburdens staff, leading to delays and potential errors. - Parking tickets that don’t automatically sync license plates to parking management systems, causing traffic jams as visitors wait to enter the parking lot. The result is traffic congestion, delayed park entry, and an overall negative first impression for guests arriving at the venue. - Special event tickets or show passes sold separately from general admission tickets, without syncing with the venue’s main scheduling system, leading to overbookings or conflicts. Overcrowded venues bring safety concerns, and an inability to accommodate all ticket holders comfortably. - Membership or loyalty program data not integrated with on-site systems, leading to guests being unable to redeem rewards or access member-exclusive areas seamlessly. This diminishes the value of loyalty programs and creates potential loss of repeat customers. - Tickets sold through resellers or Online Ticketing Agencies that are not properly synced with venue timeslots and capacity, leading to accidental overbookings. This can be an operational nightmare to resolve, and customer satisfaction will suffer. It can be tempting to think that these problems can be avoided by choosing a software solution that integrates all venue IT into a single suite. But the reality is that such a solution does not exist, and vendors that promise to solve all your IT problems fail to deliver in practice. Fortunately, there is an alternative: using different software solutions and making them work together. ## The magic behind the scenes: How software solutions cooperate At the heart of a seamless cooperation between different software solutions lies the **API**, or Application Programming Interface. Imagine the API as a theme park map that guides visitors to various attractions. Just as the map provides the routes and information needed to get from one ride to another, an API provides the pathways and instructions that allow different software applications to interact and share information, guiding data where it needs to go. In the digital realm, APIs allow software solutions like ticketing systems, entry gates, parking solutions, and other systems to exchange information and work together, creating a great experience for visitors while saving time for operators. The concept of **API-first** takes this idea a step further. API-first is a design philosophy that prioritizes the development of APIs at the beginning of the software creation process. This approach ensures that the software can easily communicate with other applications and systems from the get-go. It's like planning a city with roads and infrastructure before building the houses and shops; by ensuring the foundational elements for connectivity are in place first, you make it easier to add, expand, or modify the city (or in this case, the software ecosystem) later on. API-first design promotes flexibility, scalability, and integration capabilities, making it easier to adapt to changing needs and technologies. So why would you care? If you select the right vendors for the different elements of your IT landscape, you save yourself time and money while giving your visitors an experience upgrade. ### Spotting API-first solutions So, how do you identify software vendors that embody the API-first philosophy? Here are a few indicators: **Public Documentation**: Look for solutions that offer comprehensive, accessible API documentation. This transparency is a sign that the vendor values integration and is committed to making their system as compatible as possible. **Prebuilt Integrations**: Vendors that provide prebuilt integrations with other common software solutions in your industry are showing their commitment to the API-first approach. These integrations save time and resources, streamlining the process of getting disparate systems to work together. **Use Cases and Success Stories**: Vendors that are genuinely API-first often showcase detailed case studies or success stories highlighting how their APIs have been used to solve complex problems or enable innovative integrations. These stories can provide insights into the API's capabilities, flexibility, and the level of support the vendor provides to developers and partners. ### Overcoming integration concerns Diving into an API-first strategy can raise concerns, particularly around managing relationships with multiple vendors' support departments. However, these challenges can be mitigated by selecting vendors that not only subscribe to the API-first philosophy but also demonstrate a strong commitment to customer support. When vendors are used to operating in an API-first world, they understand the importance of cooperation, not just between their software and others but between their support team and their clients. The best vendors in this category are usually willing to act as first line support for other (API first) suppliers in your IT landscape. Adopting an API-first approach in the leisure industry is not merely about keeping up with technology trends; it's about ensuring a smooth, enjoyable experience for your visitors and ensuring your staff isn’t spending time on tasks that should be automated. By prioritizing software solutions that are designed to work together from the ground up, venues can eliminate many of the headaches associated with system integrations, leading to happier guests and, ultimately, a more successful operation. Embrace the API-first philosophy, and watch as your venue's disparate systems unite into a harmonious digital symphony. **About the author:** Gijs Hendrix is an experienced B2B product leader with a strong technical background. As the Head of Product at Convious, he applies his skills in product vision and strategy to drive innovation and growth, revolutionizing attraction ticketing solutions. ## Capacity Based Pricing explained in 3 questions URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/capacity-based-pricing-strategy-explained In the leisure industry, finding the sweet spot between demand and capacity is crucial for success. Meet capacity-based pricing: a strategy that harmonizes economics and customer experience. ![Kimberley Prenger](/blog/capacity-based-pricing-strategy-explained/inline-1.png) We’ve decided to ask the Revenue Optimization Specialist, **Kimberley Prenger** about her expert opinion on the topic of capacity based pricing in the leisure industry. And this is what she has to say… ## “How would you describe capacity based pricing?” Kimberley: “Well, the name already says it all. It is pricing based on the capacity. If there are still a lot of tickets that need to be sold, the price will start low, the more tickets get sold, the more we will increase the price. The great thing is that we implemented it in our already powerful real-time-pricing algorithms to make it even more powerful.” > “Capacity Based Pricing is closely linked to [**our Crowd Control service**](/stories/how-movie-park-took-control-of-their-visitor-flow). In Crowd Control, you can decide the maximum number of tickets you want to sell by defining your maximum capacity.” ## “What are the psychological effects driving the success of a capacity based pricing approach?” Kimberley: “If you transparently implement Capacity Based Pricing, this pricing approach can leverage several psychological effects to drive its success. Of course scarcity is one of the best-known psychological principles coming into play: limiting the number of tickets automatically makes the ticket more desirable. Customers are motivated to act quickly to secure their spot or purchase before the capacity fills up. So, automatically, scarcity creates the principle ‘Urgency’. People are more likely to take action when they feel a need to act quickly to avoid missing out on an opportunity. One other well-known principle is ‘social proof’. Seeing others engaging with the offer can validate its worth and encourage others to follow the example. And the last one I will mention is Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). People don’t want to miss out on the great deal of all the low prices or could get scared the price will increase even further.” > "These effects have been seen since the early implementation of real-time-pricing. Yet, now, with capacity being taken into account, the impact it has on the visitor price perception is even more powerful. It’s something that we cover in our [**full guide to dynamic pricing**](/blog/attractions-pricing-strategies-how-to-achieve-your-goals), a must read if you want to get to know more about the basics of dynamic pricing in the leisure industry." . ## “What is your advice for any leisure park wanting to embrace capacity based pricing?” Kimberley: “Because it’s so powerful it is good to first determine whether implementing such a pricing strategy is in line with your overall business goals. Incorporating capacity-based pricing in your pricing strategy works amazing when you have a venue or event with limited capacity because it optimizes your revenue and conversion rates. Next to this, and not often thought of is increasing your online review scores. If you know the perfect visitor amount in the park for a good customer journey, you can utilize this knowledge in your pricing strategy." > *"And lastly it works perfectly for visitor spread during the day when using time slots as it optimizes the pricing during the day and for every time slot. At the end of the day, because of all of this, chances are high that you attract more people to your venue and reach another audience. People who would normally search for cheaper tickets on other websites or could not afford to go at the higher rates are now able to book tickets on your website."* There you have it! Kimberley helped us delve deep into the ins and outs of capacity-based pricing within the leisure industry, unraveling its significance through just three fundamental questions. From optimizing revenue streams to enhancing customer satisfaction and ensuring operational efficiency, it's clear that this pricing strategy holds immense potential for businesses seeking to thrive in a competitive landscape. As we wrap up this insightful discussion, remember to keep these principles in mind as you navigate the dynamic world of leisure and entertainment. And news alert… our Convious Dynamic Pricing algorithm now supports Capacity Based Pricing! If you are looking for [**the right pricing for your attraction site**](/dynamic-pricing) or want to get more insights on the topic, explore our dynamic pricing solution for the experience economy. ## 5 Emerging Trends in the Leisure Industry for 2026 URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/emerging-trends-leisure-industry Emerging trends in the leisure industry are the technological and operational shifts like AI and sustainability, reshaping how visitor attractions such as theme parks, zoos, and museums operate. These trends matter because visitor expectations and operating costs are both rising. [Global Business Research Insights](https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/amusement-theme-park-market-125224), reveals that tightening safety regulations and compliance protocols now impact approximately 35% of all ride operations globally, driving up complex maintenance costs. In response, leading leisure operators are adopting five trend categories: sustainability, visitor satisfaction, automation with AI, a connecting ecosystem, and personalisation. Each represents a concrete action ready to be implemented, from deploying digital park maps to integrating a POS system with an online ticketing platform. Leisure operators that adopt these five trends position themselves to increase revenue, improve the guest experience, and stay competitive in an increasingly digital attractions market. ## Trend 1: Mobile Passes and Digital Wallets (Apple Wallet & Google Wallet) In recent years, **sustainability** has evolved from being a buzzword to a fundamental principle guiding businesses across industries, including the leisure sector. By moving to online bookings, visitor attractions can cut out the paper waste entirely. Instead of making guests print out confirmations at home, venues are leaning into native digital wallets. Integrating your ticketing system with Apple Wallet and Google Wallet means visitors just download their passes directly to their phones. It makes the entire gate experience frictionless, allowing for instant, contact-free scanning while keeping things completely green. Another good example of this digital shift is the **adoption of a digital park map** within the venue's app, offering visitors user-friendly navigation and real-time updates while contributing to the reduction of paper waste. This dual focus on sustainability and improved guest experience exemplifies the industry's commitment to fostering a greener and more enjoyable future for leisure enthusiasts. Check out our article on [**how to create a theme park map**](https://support.convious.com/help/park-map-configurator-31b8cc3f). ## Trend 2: Shifting the focus to Visitor Satisfaction In today's ever-evolving leisure industry landscape, ensuring customer satisfaction remains a top priority trend, driving businesses to take proactive steps toward enriching the customer experience. At the core of this trend lies the necessity to meticulously monitor **E-Reputation**. Acknowledging the significance of online reviews and social media influence, leisure establishments are increasingly vigilant about managing their digital footprint to assess customer sentiment and address feedback promptly. Furthermore, there's a growing emphasis on personalised feedback collection methods. Companies are actively engaging with their customers through surveys, interactive platforms, and direct communication channels to gain insights into preferences, concerns, and suggestions. By integrating **E-Reputation management** and **asking feedback directly from consumers**, the leisure industry is not only stimulating a culture of continuous improvement but also cultivating stronger, more customer-focused relationships. Learn more about [**tools to help you deliver a better visitor experience**](/). ## Trend 3: Implementing AI for your venue (Dynamic Pricing & Revenue Management) Another prominent trend in the leisure industry is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance business operations, with **dynamic pricing** standing out as a prime example. AI is revolutionising how leisure establishments manage pricing strategies by using algorithms that analyze real-time data, market demand, and various influencing factors. Dynamic pricing allows businesses to optimise costs and maximise revenue by adjusting prices in response to changing market conditions. This not only ensures competitiveness but also provides a personalised and responsive pricing structure that aligns with customer demand. By **leveraging AI for Dynamic Pricing**, the leisure industry is not only streamlining operational efficiency but also staying agile in a dynamic market, ultimately offering a more tailored and attractive experience to customers. Just check out some of [the latest innovations in pricing strategies](/what-is-the-best-pricing-strategy-for-attractions-to-manage-high-season-demand). ## Trend 4: Building a leisure ecosystem that integrates easily (API & POS) Another massive trend is the shift toward API-driven platforms. By connecting different software systems, leisure venues can operate with a completely synchronised ecosystem. A prime example? Integrating your [Point of Sale (POS) system](https://pos.convious.com/), [self-service kiosks,](https://www.convious.com/ecom/kiosks) and online ticketing platform through APIs. Instead of managing separate tools for your front desk, walk-up kiosks, and online sales, everything talks to each other in real time. This means live inventory updates across all channels, zero double-booking headaches, and faster checkouts for your guests, whether they buy on their phone, tap a kiosk screen, or walk up to the counter. Sounds like the perfect scenario, right? [Get in touch with our team today](https://info.convious.com/book-a-demo) to see how we can make it happen. ## Trend 5: Personalise the visitor experience before, during, and after every visit Last but certainly not least, another visible trend in the leisure industry is **personalised engagement with visitors before, during, and after their experience**. Recognising the importance of personalised communication, leisure businesses are actively investing in strategies that establish a connection with visitors at every stage of their journey. Prior to visits, **personalised communication** takes the form of targeted marketing, social media engagement, and tailored promotional materials, creating anticipation and excitement. During the experience, businesses leverage mobile apps, interactive exhibits, and **real-time communication** to enhance visitor engagement, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable stay. Post-visit, **personalised follow-ups**, loyalty programs, and feedback forms continue the conversation, fostering a sense of community and encouraging repeat visits. This trend underlines the industry's commitment to not only providing exceptional on-site experiences but also to **nurturing lasting relationships with visitors** that extend beyond the visit itself. Read more about [**personalized visitor experience before, during and after**](/blog/10-ways-artificial-intelligence-can-help-zoos-theme-parks-museums-and-the-entire-leisure-industry). As the leisure industry continues to evolve, businesses that **embrace these trends** will not only **stay relevant** but also **thrive in attracting and retaining visitors** in an increasingly competitive landscape. From **sustainable practices** to **cutting-edge technologies**, these trends are reshaping the leisure industry, promising a future where customer satisfaction and innovation go hand in hand. Convious is an AI-driven, all-in-one e-commerce platform specifically designed for the leisure and attractions industry, such as theme parks, zoos, and museums. It enables operators to manage ticketing, dynamic pricing, and visitor engagement in one place to increase conversions and enhance the guest experience from booking to visit. With our eCom, Self-service Kiosks, and Point-of-Sale solutions, we turn first-time visitors into long-time loyals. ## 3 questions attractions visitors have about dynamic pricing URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/attraction-visitors-views-on-dynamic-pricing Dynamic pricing has been a common practice in the travel industry for ages. If the term doesn’t ring a bell it’s probably because you’ve never heard it before but you surely know what it refers to. To put it simply, imagine you are planning your next trip and want to buy a plane ticket. You look at the prices and see that if you choose to fly during the weekend, the price for the ticket will be rather high, yet if you look at the rates for any day in the middle of the week, they are considerably lower. The average customer in this case would assume that everyone wants to travel during the weekend since they are off work and have more time. And we all know that when the demand is high, so are the prices. However, this is not yet the norm for the visitor attractions industry. And considering that people are fine with buying flights or hotel rooms at different fares each time, it left us wondering what their attitude to price variations at a visitor attraction would be? This is why, together with [Baker Richards](https://www.baker-richards.com/), we went and got insights into the attitudes of visitors towards dynamic pricing in the attraction industry. Surveying 550 adults in the UK who plan to visit an attraction in the next 12 months. And based on our findings, we are here to answer some of the most common questions attraction visitors might have about dynamic pricing: ## 1. Dynamic what? Most people are still not familiar with the term dynamic pricing. In fact, **less than a quarter of the survey participants knew the term.** Yet, when given an example such as the plane ticket prices we talked about earlier, they could easily recognise the practice. Other industries such as theatres or supermarkets have also adopted real-time pricing based on demand for quite a while now. And again, when survey respondents were asked about it, they were unaware that they might have encountered price changes for such services before. As you can see, most of them are used to paying different prices for services such as flights, and hotels, but not so much for buying tickets for visiting attractions, which brings us to the next point. Learn more about Dynamic Pricing with our [free White Paper](/eblog/guide-to-dynamic-pricing-for-the-experience-industry)! ## 2. Is Dynamic Pricing only about increasing fares? Well, no. This change in price is not happening just so that attractions can earn more money, but so that they can optimise their operations and guarantee the best experience for their visitors. There's a definite price sensitivity among attraction visitors. By conducting some experiments where we gave the respondents pricing variations based on different sets of factors, we could see that most of them would opt for the cheapest option in all cases. It's all about getting the best deal. Visitors agree that an attraction should lower its prices when the demand is lower, but are sceptical of a rise in price when there is high demand for that particular time period. From an operator’s point of view, there is no difference between the two scenarios, as high demand and a more crowded venue mean more preparations, but how can we explain that to the visitors? ## 3. What's in it for the visitor? When implemented correctly Dynamic Pricing can improve visitor experience helping balancing visitor flow, broaden and diversify audiences with more price options and improve financial results for the venue. So why are visitors still sceptical about Dynamic pricing? The answer is simple: they still need to be educated. **Robin Cantrill-Fenwick**, Chief Executive, Baker Richards comments: > *“By educating visitors into this way of thinking, destinations can manage capacity, increase visitor numbers and give guests a better experience by spreading visitor ingress. At a time when incomes are being hit across the board, dynamic pricing can arguably be fairer than a traditional concessions model, as it opens up lower prices to anyone who needs them - so long as they book early.”* Clear communication is essential to help people make a good choice and understand how to benefit from the variations in pricing. **The first and crucial step is understanding your visitors.** Luckily, we did the hard work and we have put together all the findings of our research in partnership with Baker Richards. You can now get insights into how visitors understand and approve dynamic pricing depending on advance booking, threshold and capacity scarcity, discounts, and many more. Are you ready to be part of the revolution in the Attractions Industry? If you have any questions about the topic or wish to get started with dynamic pricing, get in touch with our team. We are here to help you reach your venue's full potential. ## How to evaluate your current POS solution URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/how-to-evaluate-your-current-pos-solution ## What is POS? First things first, what is a POS? A **Point of Sale**, also called **point of purchase**, refers to the software and hardware a venue uses to proceed all its transactions. From retail & services to hospitality & ticketing, a Point of Sale should allow you to sell any type of product or service. But is it really the case? When running an **attraction business**, may it be a theme park, a museum, a zoo or an aquarium, one of the most important things to consider is the quality of your Point of Sale (POS). Nobody enjoys being let down by their POS system in the middle of rush hour (oh the misery…). This is why it's important to know how to **evaluate your current system**, and ask yourself if it really fits your needs. *Are you able to easily sell all the products and services you offer?* *Do you face a lot of downtime?* *Are your employees at ease with the software?* Those are just 3 of the many questions that you might have when thinking about your POS. Which is why we will give you a few considerations to keep in mind when evaluating your POS. ## What are the common issues of a POS? A lot of venue managers have testified about their experiences with different types of POS. Here are the main issues that they pointed out. If you work with a POS, then you will probably recognise your own issues. ### Outdated legacy systems ![Common issues with POS - how to overcome them](/blog/how-to-evaluate-your-current-pos-solution/inline-1.jpg) If you've ever searched for "*how to set up a point of sale system?*" on Google, then you might be familiar with this problem. This is probably the number one issue we hear about every-time we talk to attractions managers. The truth is that most POS systems were created by huge companies that are pretty ancient and traditional (for the majority of them). This resulting in hardware that can't be replaced easily because it requires them to run on their own operating system – which of course gives the supplier the ultimate power. These legacy systems are usually pretty hard to use, and to get a grip of. You need to heavily train your employees before they're able to sell anything with it, and sometimes that is not even enough. Because again, the supplier is the only way out since no other company can help out with the maintenance or even just understand how it works. ### Lock-in effect Which brings us to our next point, all these outdated systems that run the market nowadays are very often sold like a simple product. Meaning that the supplier would install your POS and sell you the license, but if you need any extra development for it to fit your venue they would sell it to you as an upgrade - rather than a part of the product that you've already paid good money for. Or they don’t make it happen at all. And since you don't really have a choice anyway, you end up paying for it or with an incomplete solution So, in the end you're stuck in a loveless relationship with your POS supplier who doesn't look at you the way they did before. But since you are completely dependent on them, and you think switching systems would cost you too much money and time, you keep enduring it. ### Down-time at the worst times ![stop worrying : choose the best POS solution](/blog/how-to-evaluate-your-current-pos-solution/inline-2.jpg) Picture this: you're in the middle of high season, more than a hundred visitors are waiting outside, and your POS system just crashed. And since you're dependent on your supplier to get it back live, your entire business day will suffer. This is a situation that many of the venues we talked to have faced in the past. And they all believed that down-time was a part of the equation in any POS they would choose. But this is what the suppliers have been telling their customers, that it's just normal to have down-time when working with heavy hardware. Because it is their own reality. But nowadays with all the digital solutions that exist, you shouldn't have to face another minute of down-time. You just have to [know where to look!](https://www.convious.com/the-smoothest-all-in-one-point-of-sales) ## How to evaluate your own POS system? All these issues we listed are real, it is the sad conclusion of the many conversations we had with attractions talking about their experience with different POS systems suppliers. So if you are looking for a way to evaluate your current POS solution, what we can suggest is to take a look at all these common problems, and try to apply them to your own system. *Do you also face them?* *How often does it happen?* If the answer to these questions is not satisfactory, then you should probably start looking elsewhere. **And remember that change is never a bad thing. Just make sure to** [change for the better.](https://www.convious.com/the-smoothest-all-in-one-point-of-sales) If you are already looking into other POS systems, then we might have just what you need. Make sure to stay tuned, and feel free to contact us if you would like to discuss this topic further. We are always happy to help! ## Integrating food and beverage into the Visitor’s Journey URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/integrating-food-and-beverage-into-the-visitors-journey We love food. Let’s start with that basis. And if you landed here, probably attractions such as theme parks, zoos, museums, or wellness centers are your thing. So, let’s integrate the best of both worlds: having a great food (and beverage) experience while being in a leisure venue. Who doesn’t appreciate a flavourful ice cream after hoping out of a thrilling rollercoaster? Or maybe a delicious burger after visiting the cutest newborn baby elephant? Few things sound better than that. Wouldn’t you agree? For most venues, the food & beverage experience is only limited to the moment visitors are in the venue itself. But, let me tell you a secret: your F&B can be integrated into your whole Visitor’s Journey, even before the visit date itself. You can probably suspect that technology plays a key part in all of this, and you are right: [mobile food ordering](https://www.convious.com/mobile-food-ordering?_ga=2.190181548.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930) is here to change the way your visitors order their food. For the purposes of this blog, I am going to use an example of how this could work with food and beverage in theme parks. ## But first, a quick look at the visitor’s journey: As mentioned before, your visitor’s journey starts way before they cross your door, the experience starts at home. So, to simplify the concept, the visitor’s journey is divided into three important phases: 1. Before the visit: When they are in the main research stage thinking “hmm… what should I do this weekend?” and they are considering your venue as an option. This phase ends minutes before they cross your door, so think about ticket purchases, the day-out planning, and everything in between. 2. During the visit: This is all the time they spend in the venue itself, enjoying and creating memories. 3. After the visit: We could consider this as the phase that only ends when your guest re-visits your venue. ( that can be quite soon if you press the right buttons ;) ) ## Integrating Food & Beverage before the visit starts Before we continue, let me clarify something: I am aware that your food and beverage offer is probably not the main reason why your visitors decide to visit your venue. But, they are deciding to visit because of the experience you offer, and F&B plays an important role in it. Imagine you caught the attention of a family who has decided to visit your theme park in two weekends. When they are in the process of [buying a ticket from your website](/5-best-practices-for-your-online-ticket-shop?_ga=2.190181548.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930), you could also show them all the food ordering opportunities in your venue, and if they want to plan ahead, they can even place an order for the day of their visit. Yes, two weeks in advance. If your venue has an app, [such as the one Tap offers](http://www.convious.com/tap?_ga=2.190181548.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930), then the spectrum of possibilities widens up. You can send [push notifications](/why-your-venue-needs-to-be-sending-push-notifications?_ga=2.190181548.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930) showcasing your delicious menu, or you can even show on your app’s home screen the different restaurants and snack bars that your venue has to offer. If your venue doesn’t have an app (yet), don’t worry. You can still use the confirmation emails or even the emails you send the day before to try and upsell your delicious offer. In this way, you are strategically offering F&B and getting orders in, even before your visitor has arrived at your venue. ## Making the visit even better Once your visitors cross your doors, the fun starts (literally!). Here is where [mobile apps](/how-millennialls-are-fuelling-experience-economy-through-their-phones?_ga=2.190181548.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930) come in handy. You can have a digital park map and connect it to the mobile food ordering section of each specific restaurant and make an order that is to be picked up in a couple of hours. This way, [your visitors don’t have to spend valuable time queueing](/how-attractions-can-use-virtual-queuing-for-safe-and-smooth-visitor-experience?_ga=2.231216408.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930) and waiting to order and pick up their food. They can do it through mobile ordering, and take advantage of the waiting time by exploring your venue. A win-win situation, don’t you think? ![ezgif.com-gif-maker-2](/blog/integrating-food-and-beverage-into-the-visitors-journey/inline-1.gif) You could also trigger an automatic push notification around lunchtime, where you could promote some food and drinks from nearby restaurants or snack bars. Your visitors could quickly place an order triggered by the push notification. In the end, it is all about sending the right message, to the right person at the right time. If you are reading this and saying “How can I do this if I don’t have an app?” don’t worry, we got you covered. Mobile food ordering is all about combining online tools to make the offline experience even better. You could still have all your menus online, and people could still order directly from their phones on your website, without the need for an app (of course, our advice would be to really consider an app as a digital booster of the offline experience). You could promote the digital order throughout QR codes in strategic places in your venue, stickers in the bathroom, digital screens, and more. The possibilities are as wide as your creativity. You can easily create QR codes with tools such as this [free QR code generator](https://www.beaconstac.com/qr-code-generator)! The main purpose of implementing Mobile Food Ordering is to have a seamless F&B experience and just make the visit even better. [Want to know all the benefits of having Mobile Food Ordering? Read here](https://www.convious.com/mobile-food-ordering?_ga=2.231216408.605861233.1624017930-682402636.1624017930) ## The day has ended. What now? The visitor left the park, their day has ended, but the visitor’s journey has not. Remember the third phase of the customer journey? The “after” stage is where all the loyalty programs would kick in, looking for creative ways to get that visitor to re-book a day with you. If your venue is using Mobile Food Ordering, it means that you are collecting even more data from your visitors; you now know what they like to eat, if they have any beverage preferences, if they are vegan, or even if they liked the premium special your venue just launched. You can strategically use this for loyalty purposes, and to show review results based on F&B to help convince new potential visitors to book a great day out visiting your venue. As you have seen, Food Ordering should not only be limited to the moment visitors are in your venue. You could start incorporating the delicious factor of F&B weeks before they arrive, and weeks after they leave. As mentioned above, the possibilities are as wide as your imagination. ## How attractions can use virtual queuing for a safe and smooth visitor experience URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/how-attractions-can-use-virtual-queuing-for-safe-and-smooth-visitor-experience Picture this: your visitors coming back to your venue, with excitement and adrenaline running through their veins for finally being able to experience a fun day at your attraction, only to find out that the rides are full for the day and that they have to queue for hours. Now, that’s a bummer. In fact, **if there’s one thing that frustrates people on a day out is all that wasted time queuing.** Anyone paying for a ticket to visit your venue wants to make the most value for their money, and having to stand in a line for every ride clearly presents an obstacle to their desire of having a fun day and enjoying a smooth experience, But that is not the only issue that queuing entails. In addition, it presents a huge operational challenge for your post-COVID19 reopening and keeping your venue safe from any potential outbreaks. And let's face it, placing 1,5 meter marks on the floor in order to have socially distanced queues is not going to cut it anymore. We all know that some people tend to relax once in the venue and forget to keep socially distanced from each other, while others will be dealing with discomfort and feelings of insecurity due to the closeness of those exact people queuing way too close to them. However, queues are not an issue of this new normal, they simply present a new risk now that we’re dealing with a pandemic. But way before that, theme parks and other attractions within the experience economy had already come out with different alternatives and workarounds in an attempt to solve the issue of demand exceeding capacity on their rides. You are probably familiar with some of the solutions and alternatives implemented by some attractions in order to avoid people waiting multiple hours in a physical queue, such as **line-skipping passes, charging different prices for some particular rides, or fast-pass lanes with ride reservation systems**, by which people are assigned specific return times to board an attraction. However, some of these solutions demand gathering data in order to estimate accurately how many people an attraction will be able to board in a given hour, so that there is no overbooking. For this reason, attractions within the experience economy need better queue management solutions that can make the visitor experience smoother, safer, quicker, and overall more pleasant. *And that is exactly where virtual queuing comes into play.* Virtual queuing makes the afore-mentioned challenges an issue of the past, removing physical queues altogether. ![Virtual queuing removes physical queues altogether](/blog/how-attractions-can-use-virtual-queuing-for-safe-and-smooth-visitor-experience/inline-1.jpg) ## What are the benefits of virtual queuing and how does it work? All in all, implementing a virtual queuing solution in your attraction will help you **get rid of your visitors’ most recurrent pain-point**, and therefore, **drastically improve their in-venue experience**. More specifically, you’ll be able to: - **Reduce waiting times and significantly improve your customer experience.** Less waiting means a better customer experience, and happier visitors. Those people can now spend that time exploring more areas of your attraction, including your different restaurants and shops in-venue, rather than waiting aimlessly in line. - **Increase visitor spend.** Additional time to have fun and explore around your venue will lead to an increase in purchases for things such as food and beverage or gift-shop items, and can even open up the opportunity for upsells such as “fast-lane” digital passes by which your visitors can also progress quicker through that virtual queue. - **Multiply your visitors’ fun time** Get rid of dad’s grumpy face, grandpa’s back pain, or the kids’ anxious nagging by removing queues altogether. Delight your visitors by delivering a seamless experience and don’t let queues ruin their day. - **Avoid long queues and unsafe crowds** Support social distancing and be 100% compliant by smoothly managing your visitors from hot-spots to less crowded points in your attraction. Help them move around your venue more efficiently and make the most of their time and experience. Essentially, any virtual queuing system works on the basis that the visitor accesses a queue online instead of physically, and can then go enjoy any other activity parallel to progressing along that queue. Then, a couple minutes before his or her turn of boarding the ride, the visitor gets notified that they are up next, and can come back to the ride to enjoy the fun right away. [Convious’](https://www.convious.com/) virtual queuing solution specifically works in integration with the [Tap mobile app](https://www.convious.com/tap?_ga=2.55881323.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453). Therefore, visitors can simply walk up to a ride, scan the QR code at the entrance and add themselves virtually to the queue. And as easy as that, they’re next in line! They can then spend the next hour exploring the less crowded areas of your venue (thanks to heat mapping and crowd control capabilities incorporated into the Tap app), until they get an in-app notification communicating that their time to board the ride is coming up. Isn’t that a much more pleasant use of their time? ![Virtual Queuing for Attractions](/blog/how-attractions-can-use-virtual-queuing-for-safe-and-smooth-visitor-experience/inline-2.jpg) ## What should you look for in a virtual queuing system? There is a number of different virtual queuing solutions in the market, so when selecting the ideal one for your venue, you should take into consideration the following factors: - **Does it integrate with your current ticketing and operational system?** If you want to provide a seamless and smooth experience, then it’s crucial that you integrate all of your different customer touch-points, instead of having multiple disconnected systems, since that will only create confusion and friction for your customers, while keeping your data in silos. Instead, choose a virtual queuing solution that will easily integrate with the rest of your systems (including your venue’s mobile app, website, visitor management solution, P.O.S, and so on). - **Does it also support physical queues and non-mobile users?** Although most people these days are avid smartphone users and are delighted to see you [incorporate mobile technologies into your attraction](/guest-facing-mobile-apps-leisures-latest-game-changer?_ga=2.16539126.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453), it’s important to consider that there still might be people among your audience which are not comfortable with the use of mobile technologies, or who will be reluctant to download an app. They might be the minority, but still, you shouldn't leave their needs unattended. For example, an alternative for this could be to offer wearable devices at the entrance that are equally compatible to your virtual queuing system. Related read: [Guest-facing mobile apps: leisure’s latest game-changer](/guest-facing-mobile-apps-leisures-latest-game-changer?_ga=2.16757494.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453). In addition, keep in mind that although virtual queuing is a great solution for those rides in which your capacity struggles to meet demand, or where you experience frequent downtime, you might not want or need to implement it in every single ride at your attraction. Therefore, it’s always nice to opt for a solution that will make both physical and virtual queues compatible. - **Does it deliver powerful customer insights?** By integrating your virtual queuing system with a **data-driven solution**, you’ll be able to know what’s happening at all times in your venue in real time, as well as to identify patterns among your visitors, so that you can double-down on what’s working, and take action upon what’s not. Knowing how your visitors move around your venue, which rides they’re willing to wait for more, or what alternative activities they choose while queuing virtually can give you unparalleled insights on your visitors’ behavior, which you can use to improve your customer engagement. ## Other ways to support social distancing and frictionless experiences in your attraction So as you can see, virtual queuing can be a great ally for any attraction wanting to offer a safer and smooth visitor experience. In addition, when implemented alongside with other crowd management technologies such as [Crowd Control](https://www.convious.com/convious-crowd-control?_ga=2.18306425.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453), [smart time-slotting](/why-time-slots-are-here-to-stay?_ga=2.18306425.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453), [dynamic pricing](https://info.convious.com/webinar-dynamic-pricing?_ga=2.18306425.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453), or in-advance reservations, it can dramatically help you stay in control of your visitor flow and ensure a safe venue. [![Crowd Control Whitepaper for Attractions](/blog/how-attractions-can-use-virtual-queuing-for-safe-and-smooth-visitor-experience/inline-3.png)](https://www.convious.com/convious-crowd-control) In the end, they’re all effective strategies that will help you delight your visitors with less waiting, and more fun! If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use virtual queuing and crowd control in order to allow both you and your visitors to plan the day better, and make the most of your experience, [book your free advice consultation](https://info.convious.com/advice-session?_ga=2.189682027.195218509.1616509453-1758913220.1616509453) and let’s discuss your venue’s particular needs. ## Attractions’ eCommerce Maturity Model: Where Do You Stand? URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/attractions-ecommerce-maturity-model The pandemic has overshadowed many areas of the [Experience Economy,](/3-overlooked-facts-about-experience-economy) having a devastating impact on its profitability, due to its sudden and inevitable decline in economic activity. However, it has also been **fuel for unprecedented innovation**. ## The Ultimate ROI Framework For eCommerce In The Experience Economy Crises can often shake and tear down frozen structures, and let’s face it, the world of leisure and attractions has been relying on frozen and obsolete pillars for quite some time now. Similarly to when a life-changing event disrupts our lives on a personal level and forces us to grow into the next version of ourselves, organizations - their processes, their culture, their values, their vision… - must also change along with the world around them. In times of great disruption and change, new priorities are set, values are scrutinized, and the urgency in terms of what needs to be done shifts, giving way to growth. And that is exactly what COVID19’s outbreak has brought to the experience economy, **a much needed development up the maturity curve**. Nevertheless, although there has been a gear up the curve, many venues are still operating far behind their potential. In this article we are introducing **Convious’ eCommerce maturity model**, as a practical framework for operators and venues within the Experience Economy to identify where they’re at, and what are the steps needed in order to advance onto the next stage. ## Meet Convious' eCommerce maturity model. **![Screenshot 2021-02-23 at 12.44.17](/blog/attractions-ecommerce-maturity-model/inline-1.png)** Maturity models are frameworks that help assess the maturity level in a specific domain. This particular maturity model is aimed to help you assess **your venue’s eCommerce digital maturity**, as well as to identify how to bridge the gap between where you currently stand and where you have the potential to be, by **planning a roadmap for the future.** ### 1. Crawl Key Identifiers: - Sells offline - Highly reliant on box office, POS, or third party resellers - Digital technologies shine for their absence In their infancy, venues operate fully offline, relying on their box office and resellers as their main selling channels. This was already limited and narrow-minded in a pre-pandemic world, but now that COVID has precluded walk-up culture in order to avoid unexpected crowds and risky high-touch selling processes, **venue’s who are solely selling its tickets and experiences offline have its days counted**. Not only because the interactions, money exchanges, and queues involved in selling physically through box offices is not COVID-compliant, but also because the development of the pandemic has shifted many of our behaviours online, commerce being one of the most note-worthy. If you want to read more about how dramatically consumer shopping behaviour has changed during the past several months, giving a boost to the rise of eCommerce, don’t miss this related article: [Navigating the wave of COVID19 2.o: Adapt to the latest shifts in buying behavior](/how-to-adapt-to-shifting-buying-behaviors). In essence, if you are in a “crawl” stage, you are leaving a huge amount of money on the table, but even worse, leaving a mass share of your audience unattended. Crawling is just bad news all around, because it is the result of unfulfilled potential, providing very little return in terms of time and value for the amount of resources invested. ### 2. Walk Key Identifiers: - Has a website, but it’s not optimized for conversion. - Sells online (but is not yet fully embracing the eCommerce model) The “walk” stage of the eCommerce maturity model is home to those venues that have managed to build a decent-looking website which also includes an online ticket shop. However, sadly, **very few are actually optimized for conversion or a satisfying user experience**. Although these venues make an arduous effort on delighting their guests during their visit and giving them the best time possible in-venue, when it comes to their online experience, it is evident that it hasn’t been designed with their visitor top of mind. Quite contrarily, it is not uncommon that inefficiencies and lack of smoothness reign all through their online presence. They operate from the assumption that that “e” on "eCommerce" is easily fulfilled by just having an online web-shop. Because that's all *electronic commerce* must be, right? Wrong. Related read: [What is eCommerce and why should venues care?](/what-is-ecommerce-and-why-should-leisure-venues-care?_ga=2.86440856.1098446840.1614066621-1468857237.1614066621) When people think about eCommerce, they usually think of an online store, but there is so much more involved in eCommerce than just selling online. In fact, we recently dedicated a full blog post on this topic: [10 things to get right in your vennue’s eCommerce this 2021](https://blog.convious.com/10-things-to-get-right-in-your-leisure-ecommerce-this-2021) So, what are some of the characteristics if you are a venue within the “walk” stage? - You sell tickets online (whether that’s day tickets, season passes, reservations, upsells…) - You provide your visitors with e-tickets - You provide discount and voucher codes - You allow upfront reservations - You allow easy rescheduling and refunds - You have turnstile and scanner integration technologies - You have a POS integration Although it is not a bad starting point, there are still a number of things that will make the difference between staying stuck this "walk" phase or moving onto a "running" one. ### 3. Run Key Identifiers: - Their eCommerce and online marketing is optimized through data-driven technology. - They embrace a D2C eCommerce model by which they can leverage the power of their own data. This is where you want to be. When you’re running, you can leverage inertia. It means you are actually using powerful tools, which allow you to achieve higher ROI, through the implementation of smart and automated technologies that improve your efficiency and accuracy in terms of serving your customers at every stage of their journey. The main key ingredient for you to be able to step into the “running” stage is **leveraging the power of your own first-hand customer data** in multiple areas within your organization, from your inventory, staffing or marketing all the way up to your sales and pricing strategies (for instance, implementing [A.I.-driven and automated dynamic pricing strategies](/5-ways-dynamic-pricing-can-help-leisure-fight-covid?_ga=2.32478270.1098446840.1614066621-1468857237.1614066621)). For that to happen, it is crucial that you are not relying on third-party resellers to achieve volume, but rather on your own direct-to-consumer sales channels. Related read: [How going D2C can protect your brand from the pandemic.](/d2c-can-protect-your-brand-from-the-pandemic) Going direct-to-consumer actually allows brands within the experience economy to develop innovation-driving customer insights, influence and connect with their customers at every stage of their customer journey, deliver highly personalized experiences, or to tap into subscription-based recurring revenue streams, just to mention a few. Venues who are already mature enough to be thriving in this “running” stage, have **put Conversion Rate Optimization at the fore-front of their strategy** and are leveraging the data gathered from their customers for continuous optimization of their offered experience. The great thing about the running stage and embracing data-driven automation is that it’s like turning on an engine that drives continuous improvement and growth for your business. Put another way, you’ll basically be able to do thighs better, cheaper, and faster, which is exactly what your goal should be. ### 4. Fly Key Identifiers: - Next-level automation. - Implementation of advanced A.I. Trying to find a venue deep in the “fly” stage these days is still like trying to look for a needle in a haystack. There are not many attractions which are leveraging advanced machine-learning and artificial intelligence in their venue’s strategy, although we are starting to see the industry pick-up pace in that direction, particularly boosted by the pandemic’s impact. The great news about that is that if you can level-up your eCommerce and digitalization strategy towards a flying stage, you will have gained a very unique competitive advantage in your industry, through strategies such as next-level personalization, which are key conversion-drivers. Related read: [How to use next-level personalization to increase conversions](/next-level-personalization-strategies-to-increase-conversions) When you’re “flying”, you are integrating all of the areas within your venue with smart technologies that have the potential to transform the way your business operates - and therefore its results - inside out, just by taking repetitive and inefficient work out from your staff’s hands, and making processes more reliable, predictable, and efficient. ## Making Your Way Through the Attraction's eCommerce maturity model. Each level of the eCommerce maturity model is obviously more complex than the one before it and going from one to the next takes increasingly greater investments in terms of time and money. However, you'll find that the results you get from doing so - delivering better and more convenient online experiences, higher conversions, more loyalty and return customers, operational efficiency, cheaper processes...- are also increasingly more worth the effort, because thanks to smart automation, each stage has the power to deliver higher ROI than the previous one. In the end, there is a learning curve in everything we do. We've been going through them our whole lives, and therefore we know that we have to learn to crawl before we can walk, and learn to walk before we can run. However, flying works a little differently. The difference with going from "running" to "flying" is that flying usually requires a leap of faith. It requires some extra trust, because it feels more risky. It's a bit like jumping off a plane. With time, you might get comfortable with solo dives, but to start with, you need the guidance, knowledge and equipment that an instructor who knows the drill can offer. That is why at [Convious](https://www.convious.com/ai-booking-platform) we are focused on empowering venues and attractions within the experience economy to create the best online and offline experiences for their visitors through a full-fledged eCommerce suite that will give them the confidence and wings to fly and reach maximum growth while staying in full control. If you'd like to know more about how our award-winning eCommerce software for attractions can help your venue scale up over the maturity curve, don't hesitate to reach out to our team of experts who will be glad to discuss your business goals and suggest the most optimal solution to get your venue to new heights. ## How do Disneyland, crowds and dynamic pricing relate? URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/how-do-disnelyland-crowds-and-dynamic-pricing-relate Few years ago, due to the measures upon COVID-19, many attractions and theme parks around the world were forced to close their gates. This had a major impact on the prosperity of parks and attractions. And so did it impact the prosperity of [Disneyland, who decided to end their annual passes.](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-01-16/disney-annual-pass-disneyland) During the pandemic **visitor capacity** has become a crucial factor when it comes to ticket sales and safety. Parks have to **spread their visitors** in order to comply with social distancing regulations and have a risk-free visitor flow. The number one victim of dealing with reduced capacity has been revenue without a doubt, which, in some cases dropping to even less than half to what it used to be in the good old days. So most venues have found themselves with the following unanswered questions: **How can we optimize our capacity limits while maximizing for revenue?** and Where can we find the added value in this post-pandemic world? You might also be interested in: [3 overlooked facts about the post-pandemic experience economy](https://blog.convious.com/3-overlooked-facts-about-experience-economy) If you are a professional within the Experience Economy and would like to gain some knowledge upon optimising your venue’s capacity, visitor spread, and revenue, while still adding value to your experience, keep on reading, because today **we are talking about the benefits of** **dynamic pricing** **in relation to** **crowd control** **and** **maximisation of your revenue**. ## Disneyland decides to end annual passes due to capacity and revenue COVID19 has had a toll on all of us, and not even the biggest fish of the attractions world has been left unharmed. Recently Disneyland decided to put an end to their annual pass program, due to its lack of profitability during the current situation. The fact that one of the giants such as Disneyland has had to put an end to a program like this, which had more than one million pass holders, has of course its very well funded strategic reasoning behind: Most of these annual passholders were people that live near the venue, and not overseas tourists. Since they live close to the venue and are frequent visitors, this visitor profile usually visits the park just for a couple hours, mornings, middays or afternoons. As a result, **they do not spend nearly as much money on food and beverage, or accommodation as tourists and visitors from abroad**. ![Fater & Son- Snacks](/blog/how-do-disnelyland-crowds-and-dynamic-pricing-relate/inline-1.jpg) Visitors who do not live in the surrounding area and who are not frequent in the venue visit Disney as a special occasion, in which they attempt to stay for one or multiple days. They also spend more money on food and beverage, accommodation and merchandise items to keep a memory of a life-time in a physical way, therefore generating more revenue for a venue such as Disneyland. All in all, the underlying issue of this annual pass program in the current pandemic context was derived from the fact that **these lower revenue-generating visitors were taking the spots and capacity slots for the ones who end up spending more** - leaving considerable revenue opportunities for Disneyland on the table. In order to maximise their revenue and have a higher share of park capacity to fill with high-spending visitors, Disneyland canceled their annual pass program. ***But what does Dynamic Pricing have in common with the decision of Disneyland, and more importantly, why should your own attraction care?*** ## Dynamic Pricing’s key role in maximizing revenue with reduced capacity Back when the pandemic started, every attraction and venue manager has had to squeeze their brains to figure out how to deal with the following scenario: **High fixed costs, visitor capacity reduced to half, government regulations to comply with, and on top of it all, anxious visitors with high expectations regarding an arduous balance between their fun and safety**. As a solution to face this challenge, **more and more attractions** (Disneyland included) **are implementing dynamic pricing strategies,** such as [Real-Time-Pricing](https://blog.convious.com/dynamic-pricing-vs-real-time-pricing). This pricing strategy allows venues and attractions to **offer an incentive for frequent local visitors to visit on slower days**, by lowering the prices then, and increasing them for the most popular days, thus generating higher revenue in the days where demand is usually high. This simple dance to the music of supply and demand orchestrated by dynamic pricing allows venues to have prices that their visitors are already willing to pay for, [adjusting to different price-sensitivities](/customers-and-price-sensitivity?_ga=2.68438739.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172) and getting people in their venue which otherwise, wouldn’t come. ![disneyland-visitor-distribution](/blog/how-do-disnelyland-crowds-and-dynamic-pricing-relate/inline-2.jpg) Therefore, having prices which are not static, but dynamic instead, offers more options to satisfy as many fans as possible, including **those who are willing to pay a higher price in exchange for flexibility**. In addition, this allows attractions to **effectively spread their attendance**, and level-out the crowds more evenly throughout their peak days, weeks, and overall, throughout the entire year. It seems like Disney is truly trying to make a membership program that fits guests’ needs, but also one that makes sense in the post-pandemic “[new normal](/convious-on-air4-with-goof-lukken?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172).” Although this new program has not been announced yet, we can assume that it will be focused on making online in-advance reservations and an overall situation that will allow for the parks to know what level of attendance to expect each day. By having better insight about attendance for each day, it not only helps Disney manage the parks properly, but also allows for a more pleasant experience for guests. You might also be interested in: [Why time-slots and in-advance reservations are here to stay.](/why-time-slots-are-here-to-stay?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172) As we have mentioned earlier, the main challenge of attractions is now about optimizing capacity, visitor spread and revenue while still providing [the best customer experience](/customer-journey-revolution-create-unique-guest-experiences?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172) to visitors. Your visitors want a safe but fun experience, and [a smart visitor spread tool](https://www.convious.com/convious-crowd-control?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172), such as the one we have at [Convious](https://www.convious.com/?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172), helps you prevent overcrowded scenarios, unsafe situations, or even fines by smartly distributing your visitors combining your [eCommerce](/10-things-to-get-right-in-your-leisure-ecommerce-this-2021?_ga=2.135965555.350364623.1613560172-240353712.1613560172) with A.I.. Crowd control is indeed one of the main reasons why Disney cancelled annual passes and doubtlessly, the key for seamless customer experiences in this new normal. ## What is eCommerce and why should leisure venues care? URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/what-is-ecommerce-and-why-should-leisure-venues-care If you haven’t been living under a rock this whole year, then you are probably well-aware of the **accelerated growth process that eCommerce has experienced** during these last months. It’s like ‘he-who-shall-not-be-named’ has pulled the switch, truly. Who? Well, you know, COVID-19, that is. Want it or not, the pandemic has forced us all to shift many of our activities and behaviours to the online world. That includes things like communication, teaching, learning, buying and selling. So even those who were not so used to messing around with electronic devices to do their groceries, or book tickets and experiences online, have also needed a crash-course on eCommerce. ![eCommerce growth due to COVID-19](/blog/what-is-ecommerce-and-why-should-leisure-venues-care/inline-1.png) Great example of it are the ‘boomers’. Before, [baby boomers did less than 50% of their purchases online, while now, ⅔ of them buy online](https://nrf.com/blog/covid-19-causes-digital-shift-boomers?utm_medium=LinkedIn%20Page&utm_source=Paid%20Social&utm_campaign=Retail%20Gets%20Real&utm_content=Ep%20182%20Katie%20Jordan%20Boomer%20shopping%20habits). The main reason for it? Convenience. A convenience that many online shoppers have now ingrained into their buying habits and that is expected to make them continue using eCommerce long after the pandemic is over, giving businesses one more reason to invest in it. However, for any brick and mortar company out there who is not familiarised with eCommerce, all of this can seem a little bit daunting at first. “What do you mean by eCommerce? What is it, really?” “How does it work? How does it fit a business like mine?” “What skills and resources do I need for eCommerce?” “What type of investment are we talking about?” “What will I get in return?” All of them very good and legitimate questions that I would definitely be asking myself as well. Which is why I want to make sure you walk out of this blog post with **answers** and knowing a little bit more about **what this type of business model can bring to your leisure venue**. Because trust us when we say, you should care. Keeping an eye on eCommerce is not something you get to *choose* anymore. If you decide to ignore it, we can certainly tell you your competitors won’t. For one very simple reason: ***it’s the way your customers want to buy from you***. On the other hand, eCommerce has enabled some of the most iconic brick and mortar businesses like Target, Walmart or Best Buy, just to name a few, to supplement and partially substitute their presence with an online store that helps them **target a wider market and [sell through more efficient distribution channels](/the-problem-with-channels-in-leisure)**. *Related read: If you are also looking to amplify your customer reach, [read this](/recovery-conversations-industry-expert-tips-and-webinar-highlights).* *![ecommerce phone](/blog/what-is-ecommerce-and-why-should-leisure-venues-care/inline-2.jpeg)* E-commerce can come in many different flavours, but we can primarily categorise them into the following four major market segments: - Business to Consumer (B2C) - Business to Business (B2B) - Consumer to Consumer (C2C) - Consumer to Business (C2B) As a leisure or attractions operator, **you fall within the first group (B2C);** you are a business that sells (surely awesome) entertainment and leisure experiences to your dear guests (consumers). Which you can do through different channels, right? So, if you are not fed up with all the acronyms that I have been throwing around yet, allow me to introduce you to the fifth (and most advantageous) variant of eCommerce. *[drumroll please…]* ***Direct.*** ***To.*** ***Consumer.*** D2C, that is! “*Dee t2o wHaAt?*” **Direct to consumer.** An effective and simple way to sell online by having your own sales channel, through a web-shop. ***Your*** web-shop. And I am emphasising that because *ownership* is a key element when it comes to **keeping control of your brand and creating strong relationships with your customers**. But there’s actually more - *way more* - to it. Let me quickly walk you through the many benefits that selling directly to your customers through your own sales channel entails. ### BENEFITS OF SELLING DIRECT TO CONSUMER: 1. **You run your show**. Meaning, you are not so influenced by and dependent on 3rd party channels and resellers. 2. **You can give back the power to your brand** by building way stronger bonds and relationships with your customers. 4. **You get first hand customer data**, which is an invaluable asset to improve your guest experience and reach operational excellence. 5. **All in all, you are in full control**. Of your sales, your prices, your fees, your brand image, your reputation, and most importantly, your data. I mean, don't you want to get continuous feedback and insights about what your customers really want and how they behave? **With a direct to consumer eCommerce approach you can**. You own all the valuable information that comes with every online activity and interaction innate to eCommerce. D2C is a **smarter and cheaper use of your sales channels** and eliminates the barrier between you and your **consumer**, giving you greater control over your brand, reputation, marketing, and sales tactics. --- So, in conclusion, while you may keep on selling offline, and online bookings might not be the ***only*** way forward, it surely is the ***smartest*** way forward. **A lack of online selling systems or outdated ones might cost you losing a big share of your audience and even revenue loss**, while there are so many perks and gains in digitalising your leisure offering and bringing your customer experience online from the very first touchpoint throughout their whole journey. E-Commerce is not a phase, it is here to stay. And if your leisure business is not already looking into omnichannel, direct, and online sales you’ve got some piled-up homework to do, because this is almost a thing of ‘yesterday’. E-commerce is not the future. E-commerce is *now*. So the real question is, which flavour are you going to choose? If you want to **learn more about how your venue could easily start selling more direct**, [have a chat with our team of experts](https://info.convious.com/book-a-demo). They are always happy to clear any doubts you might have and point in the direction that is most suited to your specific situation. ## 5 best practices for your online ticket shop URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/5-best-practices-for-your-online-ticket-shop ## Implementing an online ticketing system. Implementing an online ticketing system can be challenging. That’s probably the first thing we can agree on. But it’s also less costly and time-consuming than developing it yourself. And that's a fact. It’s not only about the selection of technology or software that you choose to use, but that it involves very diverse disciplines and stakeholders within your company, such as sales, marketing, operations and IT. Resources which you don’t necessarily count with to dedicate them fully to your online ticketing. Implementing a smart and comprehensive ticketing software to your business can help you with the heavy-lifting so you can spend more time focusing on what really matters in the leisure industry: *your guests and their experience*. The only thing left for you to do is learn how to manage and configure it to your business’ advantage to meet your strategic goals and needs. So in this post we are sharing **five best practices for your online ticket shop** that will help you convert more visitors into paying customers and start seeing improved results right away. ## 1. Ensure an optimal user experience. If happy customers and **delightful experiences** are what you strive for offline, why should it be any different within your online landscape? If you take a look into how we behave as shoppers on a day to day basis, you will notice that we have our laptops and smartphones at an arm's reach twenty-four seven. We surf the internet anytime, anywhere. So the fact that online ticketing systems are growing in popularity, both in terms of engagement and functionality, shouldn’t come as a surprise. This leaves you with no other option than to **ensure an optimal and frictionless user experience for all of those who end up in your online ticket shop**, or prepare for them to bounce away. **But how exactly can you do that?** Stand out, be seen To begin with, make sure that the visitors that come to your website can easily find what they are looking for. Don’t make it difficult for them to find your ticket shop. We have seen way too many websites where we’ve had to go down a rabbit-hole to find their check-out and buy tickets. Avoid that. Instead, play around with placing the following elements on your homepage and events page: - Place prominent CTAs (call-to-actions) - Wonder-bars - Pop-ups - Trigger Buttons If you want to know more about how to effectively use these marketing tools read ['**4 online marketing tools that will boost your online ticket sales**'.](/4-online-marketing-tools-that-will-help-boost-your-online-ticket-sales) Reduce obstacles and friction: Once you’ve grabbed their attention and you have them in your checkout, **make the purchase or reservation process as quick, straightforward and painless as possible**. - **Ask only for the information that is absolutely necessary**. While dealing with COVID-19, you will most likely have to gather some of your customers’ personal info. (such as name, address, e-mail or credit card number) in order to comply with regulations and make tracking possible - but this doesn’t mean you need to ask for every single detail. Keep it to the minimum; your customers will thank you. Furthermore, if you can pre-fill fields for those who have already made an order in the past, even better. Remember, time is a precious asset, and simplified and straightforward transactions are more appreciated than ever. - **Refine your UX design and make sure the process is as intuitive as it can be**. Your content should be concise and to the point, your buttons bold and clear, and your forms easy to fill out. If your check-out is slightly more complex or involves more steps, consider using a so-called **breadcrumb component** by which the user can have a full overview of the number of steps within the process up until the final payment or confirmation. **Allow different online payment methods** that can apply to a wide range of users, so that they don’t have to deal with the frustration of “*I came all the way here only not to be able to finish my purchase? Ugh!*”. These days online is the preferred method of payment, and a safe and convenient way of booking rooms, tickets, services and tours directly through an application or website. An online booking system that offers a secure payment portal will improve your business performance and minimise no-shows. ## 2. Get visual. ## Often images speak louder than words do and can play a big part in improving your online ticket sales and driving conversion. However, when used wrong, they can be a double-edged sword that leads to confusion and mistrust. ## Your checkout should integrate as seamlessly as possible within your website, since the contrary could make your customers feel as if they have left your environment and been redirected elsewhere. ## Additionally, the visuals and imagery you use on your checkout should have consistency and breathe your brand’s identity, which is why at Convious we allow our partners to fully customise and personalise their checkout widget so it seamlessly integrates with their brand’s look and feel. ## Some recommendations: - If you have a big list of offered products/services on your check-out’s screen and want to enhance them with visuals, make sure you create **narrow image banners** that won’t take up too much screen space. That way, you will be able to showcase a bigger part of your offering without the user having to scroll down. - Try to avoid adding text on your image banners if you have a multi-language check-out, since unlike text, they are not translatable. - Make sure you use **high-quality images**, but that they aren’t too heavy so they slow down your checkout’s loading time. - Don’t overdo it. Try to **keep your images clear and preferably, minimalistic**. Avoid overcrowded collages and screamy images that will only distract the users’ from the goal: buying from you. In the end, whether it’s Convious or another online ticketing platform you are using, it’s all about **telling the story** behind the product or services you are offering and **creating hype and excitement around the experience** that your visitor is about to purchase. ## 3. Promote sales and re-engage audiences through e-mail. A good online ticketing software should have **auto-generated confirmation emails** that are automatically sent once tickets have been purchased. Confirmation emails satisfy our cognitive need of order fulfilment. It tells the customer “*Okay, the purchase worked. You’re in our system. Here are your tickets. It’s official now!*”. As a best practice, **your confirmation email should include the following essential information:** - Name of the venue and directions. - Name of the products purchased, and the amount. - Order number. - Event date and time (when tickets are dated). - Expiry date (when tickets are undated). - Customer Service contact email. - A clear CTA button to download the tickets or a barcode/QR-code embedded within the email itself. Lastly, and in line with what we just mentioned on the previous point, confirmation emails should also contain **strong visual cues** that the customers can easily associate with the experience they just bought tickets for. Such a visually stimulating end to their order is a best practice for lucrative and recurrent business. However, **the communication with your customer should not end just yet.** You should strive to achieve a seamless omni-channel and digital customer journey **before, during, and after** your customer’s visit. This will empower you to build a stronger relationship with them and therefore increase your customer loyalty. Have you also thought about **emails as a powerful tool for re-marketing and to re-engage** your customers? Think about… - **Cart abandonment email campaigns**: Goal: Winning back customers who left your sales funnel for whatever reason (maybe they got distracted, they forgot, their wi-fi crashed, they weren’t ready…). Here are some best practices: - Send multiple follow up emails. - Increase your open rate with an irresistible subject line. - Remind them which items they’ve left behind, be specific. - You can even use an incentive (like a discount or deal) to tempt shoppers back. - **Pre-event emails and up-sells/cross-sell emails**: Goal: Promoting your event or experience, making sure your customer is ready and has all the important information at hand, and while you’re at it… why not tempt them to complement their purchase with some cross and up-selling? Include things like Google Maps directions, remind them their selected time-slot and other relevant information such as equipment or adequate clothing if applicable, and add a customisable section where you can add product or service recommendations that would go hand-in-hand with the experience or product they have already purchased. - **Post-event emails**: Goal: Receiving feedback and increasing customer recurrence. Don’t forget about your customer once they’ve walked out your venue’s door! Instead, seek all the potential involved in building a long-lasting relationship. Include a **satisfaction survey** (where you can ask your guests to rate their visit or leave comments that will help you improve their experience), or **promote future events and experiences** (and maybe try to re-engage them by offering them some sort of incentive such as a discount code or an additional service). ## 4. Use analytics to understand what works and what doesn’t. We always encourage our partners to test everything and assume nothing. Testing is the only way to discover which strategies are not working, and find the ones that will increase your ticket sales exponentially. Over time, **try and test different benefits, photos, headlines, and track conversions** to identify which of those your audience responds to best. In order to be able to extract some learnings out of your testing however, you need ***insights*** based on your data. So make sure that your software can integrate with Google Analytics and that it can provide you with friendly reports that will process, centralise and showcase to you this information in the simplest way possible. ## 5. Optimise for mobile. ***Did you know that mobile is the predominant device by which end consumers purchase and book leisure activities**?* In fact, this year alone, **66,24% of our partners’ customers have done their bookings through mobile**. This means that having a checkout process that is not optimised for mobile can slow things down and cost you a good amount of drop-offs. Among some of the reasons why mobile users don’t convert are: - Security concerns (20.2%) - Unclear product details (19.6%) - Inability to open multiple browser tabs to compare (19.6%) - Difficulty navigating (19.3%) - Difficulty inputting information (18.6%) Source: [Comscore’s Mobile Hierarchy of Needs report](https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-Whitepapers/2017/Mobiles-Hierarchy-of-Needs). Your goal should be to move users along your sales funnel and get them to finish their purchase, *no matter the device*. In order to do that, here’s a few things to keep in mind: - Keep the essentials in the thumb zone. - Minimise content and size of attachments to maximise speed. - Use payment trust logos to increase their feeling of confidence. - Provide easy editing of their cart (don’t make them go all the way to the beginning to change a date or the quantity of a selected item). In the end, a seamless usability of mobile booking apps contributes to the **overall enhancement of the user’s experience**, removing obstacles and creating higher chances of conversion. For instance, [Convious](https://www.convious.com/) uses a mobile-first and conversion-optimized checkout which achieves unparalleled high conversion rates between the first step and last step of your sales funnel. All in all, **the possibilities that mobile applications present for the leisure industry in terms of conversion, retention and ROI are simply mouth-watering**, so if you’re interested in knowing a little bit more about how to reap the benefits of mobile as part of your e-commerce journey make sure to read “[**3 ways mobile technology can improve ticket sales and guest experience**](https://blog.convious.com/3-ways-mobile-technology-can-boost-ticket-sales)”. So there you have them, our 5 best practices for your online ticket shop! **Would you add any to the list? What are the strategies that are working best for your own venue?** Let us know in the comments below and let’s keep the conversation going! ## Attractions' Pricing Strategies: How to achieve your goals URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/attractions-pricing-strategies-how-to-achieve-your-goals Choosing the right [pricing strategy](https://www.convious.com/ecom/pricing-types) for your products and tickets is one of the most important aspects of any attraction. In the Attractions Industry, pricing has been an ongoing topic. Before 2020, static pricing used to be the norm. A simple, and safe way of pricing a service, yet is it the most optimal? The external environment surrounding any visitor attractions business is constantly changing. Factors such as the pandemic health crisis, or the economic recession and the rise of [price sensitivity amongst visitors](https://blog.convious.com/customers-and-price-sensitivity), made finding the right pricing strategy a must-have. A suitable pricing strategy goes beyond generating more revenue. It can also become a way of optimising operations and improving the visitor experience. Pricing is also one of the [most relevant trends in the ticketing industry](https://access.intix.org/Full-Article/19-ticketing-industry-trends-what-to-expect-in-2023) and it will only become more important. ## Dynamic pricing: The new norm? Unlike popular beliefs, dynamic pricing is not just a way of rising prices and scaring visitors away. A good implementation of dynamic pricing can truly drive success in the Attractions Industry by allowing operators to find the best price for different days and time slots. As a bonus, it can also be done in so many different ways. ## How can Visitor Attractions choose the right dynamic pricing strategy depending on their goals? First of all, the key is to make sure **your pricing strategy aligns with your overall business goals**. Depending on whether you want to maximise potential revenue, distribute visitors more evenly or sell more products, you should choose your pricing strategy accordingly. Learning from our partners, we could observe the most popular reasons why attractions like theme parks or castles are using dynamic pricing strategies, along with some best practices. Let’s take a look at the following scenarios… ### 1. If you want to optimise operations ![optimize zoo operation with dynamic pricing](/blog/attractions-pricing-strategies-how-to-achieve-your-goals/inline-1.jpg) Optimising operations is crucial to guarantee the best visitor experience and making them come back. The key here is to have a clear understanding of how your venue will look on a certain day so you can allocate resources accordingly. You could do so by **incentivising visitors to buy in advance**. Setting up an **‘early bird’ pricing strategy** offers visitors the benefit of a reduced price by booking early. For your attraction this results in a better overview of how the venue will look on a certain day or time slot. Depending on whether you will expect more or fewer visitors, you can prepare for the day and offer the best visitor experience. This is also one of the many tips on how to optimise your attraction operations and [ease the life of your staff](https://blog.convious.com/webinar-blog/ease-the-life-of-your-staff-5-tips-to-optimise-your-attractions-operations) given by our partner, [Hannover Zoo](https://www.zoo-hannover.de/en). ### 2. If you want to spread visitor volume ![spreading visitor in theme park](/blog/attractions-pricing-strategies-how-to-achieve-your-goals/inline-2.jpg) Some days and time slots are more popular than others. Yet, no one likes an overcrowded venue that makes it impossible to truly enjoy the experience. Again, a dynamic pricing strategy can help with that. What if visitors could **“buy first and pay less”**, allowing them to have cheaper prices when booking in advance or choosing days that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise? This pricing strategy takes into account inventory and the number of tickets being sold in a certain day or time slot. For your attraction, this translates to spreading the volume evenly, while also maximising potential revenue for your most popular days or time slots. 3. If you want to generate more revenue The visitor experience is influenced by a number of factors such as weather, seasonality or simply past preferences. All of this also can directly affect your ticket price, allowing you to **generate more sales**, while also **enhancing the perceived value** of your offer. **![dynamic pricing for museum](/blog/attractions-pricing-strategies-how-to-achieve-your-goals/inline-3.jpg) An AI-based** [pricing strategy](https://www.convious.com/ecom/pricing-types) works perfectly for that. By defining the importance that elements such as weather, holidays, and seasonality, have for your attractions, the algorithm generates your optimal price for a certain day or time slot depending on these factors. For example, if sunny weather is a crucial factor for the experience at your venue, the price will be optimised to maximise potential revenue on sunny days, while, on less sunny days, it will incentivise visitors with a lower price and increase the number of tickets sold. Moreover, this also increases the perceived value of your offering. Different prices on different days help visitors differentiate between the options they have so they can make the choice. And giving visitors choices is another great way of **increasing the perceived value** of your offerings and **generating more ticket sales**. You also have the choice when it comes to choosing the right [pricing strategy](https://blooloop.com/technology/news/convious-real-time-pricing-algorithms/) for your venue. As long as you make sure that your pricing aligns with your overall strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new and drive the success of your attraction season after season! If you'd like to get to know more about the topic, or give your venue a boost with the power of dynamic pricing, get in touch with our team. We are here to help you reach your full potential. ## Name Your Own Price just got a little better (and better)! URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/name-your-own-price-just-got-a-little-better-and-better Wait! What? How is that possible? That was our reaction when we saw the results of our new Name Your Own Price bidding model. Let’s take two steps back and answer the question that you are probably having if it is your first time around: **What is Name Your Own Price?** ## Name Your Own Price 101 Name Your Own Price, or NYOP is an advanced online pricing strategy where venues give their online visitors and customers the ability to place a bid on the product or service they want to purchase. Broken down, this is what it looks like: 1. The venue tells the user that they can bid for a product, in this case, an entry ticket. ![Name Your Own Price just got better](/blog/name-your-own-price-just-got-a-little-better-and-better/inline-1.png) 2. The user, as the name of the pricing strategy indicates, names his own price. He tells the venue “I am willing to pay up to X amount, let’s say 12 Euro, to buy this ticket: ![Name Your Own Price just got better-1](/blog/name-your-own-price-just-got-a-little-better-and-better/inline-2.png) 3. The venue accepts or declines the offer based on a range of prices previously established. ![Name Your Own Price just got better-2](/blog/name-your-own-price-just-got-a-little-better-and-better/inline-3.png) And as simple as that, if the price is accepted, an online transaction is made, creating a “win-win” situation: the customer pays what he feels like paying, and the venue makes a new online sale. [*Still not using Name Your Own Price? Book a demo with one of our experts and see how it works!*](http://www.convious.com/book-a-demo) ## How did it get better? Here at Convious, we are all about helping our partners sell more directly from their websites. To do so, we support different pricing models such as static pricing, ruled based pricing, real-time pricing, and NYOP. Trust us when we say we are specialists in Dynamic Pricing, especially in the leisure industry. Just as the pricing models we offer, our platform is DYNAMIC. What does this mean? We keep on working, testing and enhancing our software in order for our partners to grow better with the help of our AI-powered ticketing solution. Let me bring Paul, our Chief Data Scientist to explain how NYOP has just gotten better: *“We have just rolled out a new counter-bidding model for all of our partners. Before the release, we ran an A/B experiment, which tested a new counter-bidding model performance against an old one.**The overall results are the following:* - *The conversion rate uplift is 8.45%.* - *Revenue per bidder uplift is 9.73%.* *The results above are overall and collected from all of our partners who are currently using out NYOP model”.* Thanks, Paul! Those are great news, not only for us but also for our partners who trust Convious’ platform to keep selling more online. Let me wrap this up with just a small reminder: if you are using any software to help manage your business, make sure it is not static. A great platform should constantly evolve based on their users’ feedback, data gathered, and testing to ensure they are delivering the best version possible to you. Also, if Name Your Own Price is something you are interested in for your venue, [one of our experts can help, just book a 30 min meeting](http://www.convious.com/book-a-demo) and we can show you all about this feature. ## Dynamic Pricing vs. Real-Time Pricing: Convious' Data Scientist Explains the Difference URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/dynamic-pricing-vs-real-time-pricing ### How can leisure visitor attractions in the UK utilise dynamic pricing to bridge the gap between consumer demand and margin protection? Yes, the world of pricing is big, but the world of data is even bigger. Nowadays, at Convious, we can continuously recalculate real-time pricing using 15-minute sales intervals and historical data, driving high-margin expansion and an average 7.5% increase in active visitor engagement time. Sounds difficult, but luckily, we can introduce you to Paul. The Chief Data Scientist, who has been working with data for more than 15 years now, and we used the opportunity to pick his brain and clarify possible confusion around [dynamic pricing](/eblog/guide-to-dynamic-pricing-for-the-experience-industry), [real-time pricing](https://www.convious.com/ecom/pricing-types), and the relationship between the two. ## Evolution of Data Science: From Academic Research to Leisure Industry Optimisation > Paul, tell us, what has your experience with data been like so far? > > "Where do I begin? Well, probably my first professional face-to-face meeting with data was in 2006, working in academia doing Data Analysis about the globular star clusters. My journey started over there in astrophysics. > > Very scientific, yes, but nowadays all data sciences are very much related to academia. Most of the algorithms and methods have been invented and used for many years, but now, with all the capabilities, they are applicable throughout many industries, such as online social products." Online products are different, but all are used socially by people worldwide. People engage with retail and ads, for example, using different modes of interaction. > **"The social aspect of my work was constant throughout my career** and still is here at Convious. > > This is what I do here, and I am excited to continue doing this." ### What is Dynamic Pricing? In plain terms, dynamic pricing is any price change that relates to the change in demand or market conditions. > There is a lot of technical and sometimes even confusing information out there. Paul, can you explain the relationship between Dynamic Pricing and Real-Time pricing in your own words? > > "That's easy!" > > "There are many many forms that dynamic pricing can take; one of the simplest forms that I believe a lot of people have already been exposed to is seasonal sales. Every shop may sell different products, but they often share events such as the autumn sale or the Christmas sale - those sales generate the demand, and usually, an influx is expected. As a result, they might put a different discount on different products, but they do not do that on regular days, let's say, on slow days or weeks. This is the simplest form of dynamic pricing that everyone has been exposed to and used to." ### What is Real-Time Pricing in online sales? With real-time pricing, the price changes immediately, every single time a market changes. Markets can be defined by many conditions: demand, supply, urgency, or even environmental factors. > "If a system is capable of detecting micro-changes in live demand and environment close to real-time, such as a sudden change in local weather, and it instantly updates the price to match that live data, that system is driven by real-time pricing. ![Comparison table of dynamic pricing versus real-time pricing. Dynamic pricing is triggered by seasons, weekdays, and predictable peaks, and is calculated periodically (overnight, weekly, or seasonally), such as charging £50 for a theme park ticket on weekends and £40 on weekdays. Real-time pricing is triggered by instantaneous changes like a sudden downpour, a single ticket sale, or a competitor drop, and is recalculated continuously at tight intervals such as every 15 minutes, like Uber surge pricing after a concert.](/blog/dynamic-pricing-vs-real-time-pricing/inline-1.png) Related read: [Practical application of Dynamic Pricing for attractions](/webinar-blog/dynamic-pricing-and-the-power-of-data) > "So, real-time systems, such as Convious’, receive real-time data from various systems, and this data is processed in real-time to make pricing decisions as quickly as possible. > > There are many, many different forms, such as time-based pricing, segment-based pricing, or peak pricing, and the most relevant one depends on the business niche and the product itself. Airlines have different routes and seats. Cinemas have different time slots and seats. Uber has different journeys impacted by environmental factors. All forms have one thing in common: they react to the demand: the market. > The frequency with which a price is updated also depends on many other factors. Certain products bring certain behavioural elements from the customer, and they also need to be taken into account when deciding on which type of dynamic pricing system to use." ### What results does dynamic pricing deliver for leisure operators? "Paul, what do you believe was the most surprising thing you learned from working with this unique way of processing and using data?" > "That’s a good question! There are many effects dynamic pricing has on certain venues. **T****here is no single global rule that can tell you 'if you start using dynamic pricing, then this or that will happen.'** > In every business vertical, in every market, the output can be slightly different. Dynamic pricing is very much linked to social behaviour. The effects and the benefits it brings very much depend on how the people react to it, because it is the customers who define success or failure. > > Businesses running in different markets have different effects and various customers, and in some cases, the possibilities are supermassive. > In some other cases, Dynamic Pricing methods that are not as real-time but more predictable, such as weekly prices, work much better than real-time updates. And again, that is a result of the ability to be predictable and be predictable towards your customers, so they know what they can expect from you. ### Concrete business case example: > "By transitioning from static pricing models to an AI-driven real-time dynamic pricing strategy, Convious partners have achieved an average revenue increase of 22%. Furthermore, empirical implementation data from the platform's unified webshops demonstrates a highly optimised average checkout conversion rate of 10.25% and a 29% increase in average order value (AOV) driven directly by smart, automated add-ons and upselling tools." So it was surprising to know that in every case, dynamic pricing successfully solved the flat price problem,but the magnitudes, the success or uplift, were very different in different cases. If I were going to predict now what the uplift in revenue or sales of a new partner coming from a new business vertical will be, that would be hard to tell without understanding the people and their particular behaviour. Because the **prices are being optimised not for business but for the users.** ### There you have it! Shortly put, whether it is dynamic pricing or real-time pricing, it will solve your static pricing problem. How to **pick the right pricing system** that will help you to drive the results you wish for will be **defined by your goals and your customers’ behaviour**. If you'd like to get to know more about the topic, or give your venue a boost with the power of dynamic pricing, get in touch with our team. We are here to help you reach your full potential. Convious is an AI-driven, all-in-one e-commerce platform specifically designed for the leisure and attractions industry, such as theme parks, zoos, and museums. It enables operators to manage ticketing, dynamic pricing, and visitor engagement in one place to increase conversions and enhance the guest experience from booking to visit. With our eCom, Self-service Kiosks, and Point-of-Sale solutions, we turn first-time visitors into long-time loyals. ## Price Sensitivity in Leisure: 9 Key Factors for Your Pricing Strategy URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/customers-and-price-sensitivity Price sensitivity is the degree to which demand for a product changes when its price changes. For leisure venues like theme parks, zoos, museums, and waterparks, nine established factors influence how price-sensitive a customer is: the price-quality effect, expenditure effect, end-benefit effect, shared-cost effect, framing effect, fairness effect, reference price effect, difficult comparison effect, and switching costs effect. These nine factors were formalised by economists Thomas T. Nagle and Reed K. Holden (2023) in [The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing.](https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Strategy-and-Tactics-of-Pricing-by-Thomas-T-Nagle-Georg-Mller-Evert-Gruyaert-Thomas-T-Nagle/9781032540726) Leisure operators most often manage these factors using dynamic pricing, which adjusts ticket prices in real time based on demand, timing, and capacity. In today's economy, a [pricing strategy](https://www.convious.com/ecom/pricing-types) is not just a way to make revenue but more often the deciding factor in whether a product or service succeeds in a customer's mind. This matters more now than at any point in the past decade. According to [Deloitte's ConsumerSignals research](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/retail-distribution/consumer-behavior-trends-state-of-the-consumer-tracker.html#travel-hospitality), experience activities account for roughly 20% of the average consumer's wallet, yet discretionary spending intentions remain well below 2021 levels as households absorb sustained cost pressure. In the UK specifically, Deloitte's Consumer Tracker recorded net leisure spending for a second consecutive quarter in Q4 2025, at 16%. The takeaway for leisure operators: today's visitor is selective, deal-aware, and comparison-driven. Understanding what makes them price-sensitive is now a core commercial competency, not a marketing nicety. ## The "9 factors affecting a consumers' price sensitivity." With busy everyday operations, we are aware that what you need are actionable and impactful insights on the spot. Congratulations! You've come to the right place. Below are the nine factors that determine how sensitive a customer is to price, each with an applied solution for leisure venues. You will be surprised how many of these are simple, logical, and easy to use. ![young-couple-shopping-online](/blog/customers-and-price-sensitivity/inline-1.jpg) ### 1.Price-Quality Effect: Customers become less sensitive to price when they perceive higher quality in return. This does not necessarily mean you need to have the best product in the world, since this is also very subjective and varies from customer to customer; it means that you might have to establish a sense of exclusivity or rareness. You need to stand out. And how to do this best as a venue? By using your experiences! A visitor will not pay more for Venue A over Venue B because its rides are technically superior, but because of the experience attached. **Solution:** [build value through end-to-end experience](https://blog.convious.com/value-creation-through-an-end-to-end-experience), offer limited-availability online tickets or special add-ons on your platform, and to reinforce quality perception, you can use word-of-mouth and reviews (incentivised). ### 2. Expenditure Effect Visitors hold a finite leisure budget and consciously decide how to divide it. With Deloitte reporting that leisure competes for a ~20% slice of total consumer spend, pricing must sit proportionally within a realistic budget. **Solution:** use historical booking data and audience insight to define your buyer persona and the income segment most important to you, then price to fit its leisure allocation. By doing so, you create a price that is reasonable and proportional to fit both you and your visitor. Of course, you can not know the exact budget of your visitors. Still, you should start gathering insights or use already collected information and historical data to have a broad idea of which income class is of the highest importance to you. In Inbound Marketing, we call this creating your "Buyer's Persona." ### 3. End-Benefit Effect Every purchase has an end benefit, and there is a threshold to what a customer will pay to reach it. The stronger the emotional or functional end benefit, the less price-sensitive the buyer becomes. A parent buying tickets for a child's birthday is anchored to the outcome (a happy child), not the per-ticket price. **Solution:** offer "all-in-one" package deals, like a children's party as online booking, and suggested itineraries ("the perfect day") that connect the purchase to the complete experience. Take Luisa for example: She purchases two tickets for a wellness weekend at the beach. Most likely, one of her goals is having a relaxed day at the spa; but what if that is not the only driver of her choice? He might have bought those tickets for him and his girlfriend because he really wished for a day away, and she loves the beach. This narrows down Luisa's choice and gives it a different level of sentiment - she wants to make his girlfriend happy! His motivation will cause him to be less price-sensitive and more focused on specific places as compared to when his only goal was a simple 'day at the spa.' What we learn from Luisa is that before the purchase, a customer will probably first decide how sensitive they are to the benefit, and then consider how much your service contributes to achieving this. The more you provide, the less sensitive they tend to get. Although this might be a process that happens unconsciously in a customer's mind, it is surely a point that the venue should be consciously aware of. Nurture and take care of their whole experience from A to Z. ![Digital experience](/blog/customers-and-price-sensitivity/inline-2.jpg) ### 4. Shared-cost Effect The smaller the portion an individual personally pays, the less price-sensitive they are. Group, family, and bundled tickets shrink the perceived per-person cost. **Solution:** design family and group ticket tiers so the headline price is divided across the party. ### 5. The Framing Effect Customers respond more positively to bundled prices and to messaging that communicates gains rather than losses. **Solution:** present every ticket tier as a strong deal in its own right. Instead of "Package A costs less than Package B," frame it as "A is amazing, and B is the best". ### 6. Fairness Effect Whether a price feels fair depends entirely on context. Is it high season, low season, holidays, or is there a special event? This is where [dynamic pricing](https://www.convious.com/dynamic-pricing?_ga=2.94442396.1455019582.1617718835-550050984.1617718835) becomes decisive. Dynamic pricing adjusts ticket prices in real time to reflect demand, timing, and capacity, so a price reads as fair within its moment rather than fixed regardless of context. Fairness perception is measurable: in a 2024 worldwide Statista survey, adults were split on whether dynamic pricing for event tickets is fair or unfair, confirming that how a venue communicates dynamic prices materially affects acceptance. Solution: pair dynamic pricing with transparent context ("early-bird," "off-peak," "last-minute") so price changes feel earned. Related read: [Dynamic Pricing Vs. Real Time Pricing](/dynamic-pricing-vs-real-time-pricing) ### 7. Reference Price Effect Buyers grow more price-sensitive when an offer is easy to compare against alternatives and sits visibly higher. **Solution:** know your competitors' pricing, but do not anchor your model to it. We are sure your offer is very different from what alternatives offer - communicate that and make the direct comparison more difficult because you offer a differentiated experience! ### 8. Difficult Comparison Effect When customers find it harder to directly compare offers, they become less price-sensitive. This is not about hiding information because transparency still matters, but about a clear point of difference that makes you genuinely incomparable. **Solution:** communicate what is unique about your venue, and re-engage familiar (returning) customers, who default to trusted brands. ![Browsing on internet (1)](/blog/customers-and-price-sensitivity/inline-3.jpg) ### 9. Switching Costs Effect Most relevant to memberships and season passes: the greater the inconvenience of switching to an alternative, the lower the price sensitivity. **Solution:** build ongoing value rather than administrative lock-in. A loyalty programme that rewards each visit, attraction, or add-on, with redeemable benefits that customers would lose by leaving. ## The bottom line Here you have them! 9 laws that, whether you like it or not, have a direct influence on your consumers' price sensitivity. Use them wisely (and creatively!). It's up to you to leverage them in your pricing strategy, but include them or not; we hope that you now have a better understanding of the psychological factors that contribute to the sense of price sensitivity. In the end, besides the competitive environment, it all boils down to knowing your customers, your venue, and the relationship between the two. *Want help finding the right pricing strategy for your venue?* Then don't hesitate to talk to a member of our team; we are here for you! Convious is an AI-driven, all-in-one e-commerce platform specifically designed for the leisure and attractions industry, such as theme parks, zoos, and museums. It enables operators to manage ticketing, dynamic pricing, and visitor engagement in one place to increase conversions and enhance the guest experience from booking to visit. With our eCom, Self-service Kiosks, and Point-of-Sale solutions, we turn first-time visitors into long-time loyals. ## 10 Ways Artificial Intelligence Helps Zoos, Theme Parks and Museums URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/10-ways-artificial-intelligence-can-help-zoos-theme-parks-museums-and-the-entire-leisure-industry As global AI spending exceeds $2 trillion, the experience economy is all about competing with digital noise, high interaction costs, and friction-filled booking flows. AI adoption has moved from experiment to economic priority: the UK Government, through its DCMS-commissioned research with EY, has formally tracked AI adoption and its barriers across the private sector since 2021. By early 2026, just over 50% of UK businesses treat AI as an important long-term strategic goal, with operational efficiency the leading priority. Attractions such as zoos, theme parks, and museums sit on large volumes of behavioural data. Traditional analysis cannot act on this data quickly enough to change a price, redirect a queue, or trigger an offer while the visitor is still deciding. However, deploying AI to solve this is not as simple as flipping a switch. # The four challenges operators must overcome before deploying AI: ![Table titled "The four challenges operators must overcome before deploying AI", listing four barriers to AI adoption in the leisure industry: technological (siloed data and legacy ticketing, POS and CRM systems), environmental and regulatory (GDPR and CCPA privacy scrutiny around family and child audiences), organisational and financial (upfront capital and integration costs against tight budgets), and human and cultural (the AI skills gap and resistance to automated workflows).](/blog/10-ways-artificial-intelligence-can-help-zoos-theme-parks-museums-and-the-entire-leisure-industry/inline-1.png) The ten applications below are concrete actions an operator can implement now, from AI-driven dynamic pricing to crowd routing and behavioural data collection. Operators that build these AI capabilities into their ticketing, pricing, and visitor-experience systems turn real-time data into decisions. With long-term results like less time spent on reporting, more immediate insight, and higher profit, positioning themselves to lead as AI adoption becomes the defining leisure trend of 2026. ## AI for Increasing Revenue AI increases revenue in the leisure industry by personalising what each visitor sees and pays in real time, based on their behaviour and the venue's live demand. Four applications stand out: **Personalised on-the-fly offers.** AI builds a profile of each website visitor as they browse and presents a tailored offer, increasing the likelihood of conversion. **AI-driven dynamic pricing.** A demand-based pricing feature lets the venue adjust ticket prices automatically in response to real-time demand, the core of AI-powered revenue management. Beyond lifting revenue, it smooths attendance by shifting price-sensitive guests from peak to off-peak periods. The direction of travel is clear even among premium operators. In November 2025, [Disney's CFO](https://deadline.com/2025/11/disney-dynamic-pricing-domestic-theme-parks-1236623985/) confirmed the company is extending dynamic pricing to its domestic theme parks to boost incremental revenue, after a successful year-long trial at Disneyland Paris. *(See how dynamic pricing works in our [5 Emerging Trends in the Leisure Industry](https://blog.convious.com/emerging-trends-leisure-industry) guide.)* **Location-based social targeting.** AI can target potential visitors on social media at the moment they check in at nearby shops, hotels, or attractions, capturing demand close to the point of decision. **Behaviour-based after-sales campaigns.** AI builds personalised post-visit email campaigns from each guest's on-site behaviour to win more returning visitors. ## AI for Reducing Costs AI reduces operating costs in the leisure industry by automating routine service tasks and matching resources to predicted demand. Two applications are immediately practical: **Customer-service chatbots.** An AI chatbot answers visitor questions on the website around the clock. [Studies by Uzoka et al. (2024)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385230161_Leveraging_AI-Powered_chatbots_to_enhance_customer_service_efficiency_and_future_opportunities_in_automated_support) reveal that chatbots can handle up to 70% of routine customer inquiries, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues, thereby increasing overall efficiency. **Demand-based staffing.** By feeding flexible variables such as weather and social-media trends into operational dashboards, AI helps managers predict how many staff to deploy on a given day, avoiding both overstaffing and understaffing. ## AI for Enhancing Visitor Satisfaction AI enhances visitor satisfaction in the leisure industry by personalising the on-site experience and managing how guests move through the venue. Three applications apply directly to zoos, parks, and museums: **Optimised animal feeding times.** For zoos, AI can combine animals' natural eating patterns with peak visitor times, so feeding happens when the most guests are present to watch. **AI-driven crowd control and dynamic routing.** AI manages visitor flow by offering different dynamic routes through the venue, easing congestion and shortening queues. *(For a real-world example, see how Movie Park Germany used [Convious Crowd Control to manage visitor flow](https://blog.convious.com/movie-park-crowd-control).)* **Personalised on-site content.** AI can deliver a personalised explanation at each animal enclosure, exhibit, or attraction, tailored to the individual visitor's interests. ## AI for Understanding Your Visitors AI helps leisure operators understand their visitors by collecting behavioural data through engaging on-site experiences: **Gamified data collection.** Offering visitors fun, educational games within the venue encourages engagement while gathering data on their interests and behaviour, insight that feeds every other AI application above. ## Turning AI Insight into Action The common thread across all ten applications is reacting to data in real time rather than analysing it months later. That is what AI delivers to the leisure industry: faster insight, more personalised guest experiences, and higher profit. As AI adoption becomes the defining trend shaping attractions in 2026, operators that build these capabilities into their ticketing, pricing, and visitor-experience systems will lead the field. Interested in learning more? Read our blog post [AI 101 - Artificial Intelligence for Business and Marketing Professionals](https://blog.convious.com/artificial-intelligence-for-business-and-marketing-professionals). Convious is an AI-driven, all-in-one e-commerce platform specifically designed for the leisure and attractions industry, such as theme parks, zoos, and museums. It enables operators to manage ticketing, dynamic pricing, and visitor engagement in one place to increase conversions and enhance the guest experience from booking to visit. With our eCom, Self-service Kiosks, and Point-of-Sale solutions, we turn first-time visitors into long-time loyals. ## Convious AI launches to provide online concierge and ticket purchase capability URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/newsroom/convious-ai-launches-to-provide-online-concierge-and-ticket-purchase-capability **September 2024** Attractions management platform Convious is launching Convious AI, a game changing online concierge that integrates seamlessly with WhatsApp and other channels such as websites to enable guests to purchase tickets to their favorite destinations through conversational text. This first-of-its-kind feature for the attractions industry is currently in beta testing and will debut at IAAPA Europe on Convious Booth 8143. Convious AI is a powerful chatbot designed to improve the visitor experience with no operational effort by making ticket purchasing more accessible and convenient, ultimately driving higher conversion rates.. It puts the power of AI into WhatsApp and web chats to support initial ticket purchases, ticket modifications, instant reissues of lost tickets and any additional assistance customers require 24/7. This innovation simplifies the buying process, negates the need for downloading additional apps and opens new opportunities for personalized engagement. The chat functionality can also be used to upsell and cross-sell additional services, such as restaurant reservations, bike and clothing rentals and dispense personalized pricing or seasonal discounts to enhance visits. The Convious AI chatbot is equipped to answer frequently asked questions, providing instant assistance to improve the overall customer experience and free up staff to perform other tasks. It supports any language, catering to an international audience. For those who enable location services on their device, Convious AI can offer personalized audio tours and provide venue navigation through onsite park maps, assistance with locating facilities based on real time positioning data and multi-day stay activity planning. Smart triggers send guests timely notifications for activities starting near them or rides with short wait times, adding an interactive layer to any experience. For operators, these interactions provide conversation insights and categorization to help further train the Convious AI for their unique attributes and the regular collection of customer feedback feeds into sentiment analysis for continuous improvements. For the WhatsApp feature, data is secured through its data privacy and encryption policies. ![Camiel pink](/blog/newsroom/convious-ai-launches-to-provide-online-concierge-and-ticket-purchase-capability/inline-1.png) Camiel Kraan, CEO and Founder of Convious explains: > *“Convious AI sets a new standard for customer convenience and interaction. While similar functionalities have been adopted by hotels and airlines, Convious is the pioneer in bringing this advanced AI chatbot to leisure industry destinations including theme parks, heritage properties, zoos, aquariums and museums.”* > *“It simplifies and personalizes the ticketing buying process even further, streamlining the guest booking experience and allowing them to make purchases through the platforms that they are actively using. This is another essential tool for boosting conversion rates, enhancing the guest experience, and streamlining operations for operators."* Visitors to IAAPA Europe will have the first opportunity to see the Convious AI chatbot in action at the Convious booth. The demo will allow industry professionals to interact with the chatbot, explore its features and discuss how this technology can be implemented in their own attractions. As Convious continues to innovate and lead the way in AI solutions for the attractions industry, the company remains committed to helping venues create unforgettable experiences for their visitors. The launch of Convious AI is a significant step in that direction, offering a glimpse into the future of theme park operations and guest engagement. To experience this in action, visit Convious at IAAPA Europe on Booth 8143 ENDS Editor’s Contact: Emily Burrows, Plaster, T: +44(0)1179530320, E: [emily@weareplaster.com](mailto:emily@weareplaster.com) ## Convious secures Series A funding extension URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/newsroom/convious-secures-series-a-funding-extension Attractions management platform innovator Convious has received an additional $9 million of Series A funding to support its next development phase. This has been secured by venture capital and private equity firm Wille Finance, with the participation of Orbit Capital, and existing investors. The extension of the round brings the total value of the Series A to $20 million, in combination of equity and debt. Convious is leading the way in the experience economy with the development of one platform that streamlines and unifies all aspects of operations, including eCommerce, crowd management, F&B, marketing, retail, sentiment analysis, and the guest experience through an onsite mobile app. This uses intelligent AI algorithms and a data-driven approach to connect with guests before, during, and after their visit, and optimise bookings rates with dynamic and real-time pricing configurators and a personalised sales journey. [Wille Finance](https://www.willefinance.com/) invests in growth companies who are leading the way with innovations in software and life science, with a portfolio of over 100 companies globally. The firm acts as a long-term investor and reliable partner for entrepreneurs. [Orbit Capital](https://orbitcapital.com/) is a growth-stage investor supporting that supports European tech & tech-enabled businesses at the scale-up stage. Since inception in the year 2019, it has supported 15 companies in their expansion, with both debt and equity investments. *Camiel Kraan, Founder and CEO of Convious explains:* ![Camiel pink](/blog/newsroom/convious-secures-series-a-funding-extension/inline-1.png) “Experience economy businesses have been through a tremendous amount of change and continue to transition, with emerging technologies and platforms bringing opportunities to reach new audiences and markets. This funding extension will allow us to continue to innovate at the rapid pace that we have become renowned for. > “We represent a selection of the biggest names across the theme park, museum, zoo and aquarium sectors and will continue to evolve our platform based on the needs of the market for all venue types, sizes and global locations.” *Cyril Petit, Tech Investor VC Investor at Wille Finance comments:* > "We are happy to join Convious as a new investor and to support the company throughout its next development phase. We are joining an innovative and passionate team that strives to transform the offline entertainment industry through technology. > > “We are convinced of the company’s capacity to develop state-of-the-art solutions allowing businesses in the leisure and entertainment sector to optimize operations and revenue, thereby making Convious’s offering particularly well-suited to tackle today’s challenges. > > “We believe in the company’s vision and are looking forward to seeing how Convious will continue to contribute to the future of the industry.” *Lukas Macko, Principal at Orbit Capital:* > “Convious is on track to become the leading Attraction Management System for large and mid-market experience economy operators. The company has shown remarkable growth and progress in recent years. It not only offers a comprehensive suite of modules, ranging from bookings and and sales management to operations planning but has also proven ability to devise innovative solutions. These capabilities uniquely equip Convious to address the evolving challenges of the leisure and entertainment sectors, boosting their operations and revenue.” ENDS Editor’s Contact: Emily Burrows, Plaster, T: +44 (0) 7376365556, E: [emily@weareplaster.com](mailto:emily@weareplaster.com) Sami Entwisle, Plaster, T: +44 (0) 7772962885, E: [sami@weareplaster.com](mailto:sami@weareplaster.com) ## Research shows Consumer Attitudes to Dynamic Pricing URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/newsroom/research-shows-consumer-attitudes-to-dynamic-pricing Attraction management platform innovator Convious and market research experts [Baker Richards](https://www.baker-richards.com/) have unveiled the results of research into consumer attitudes to dynamic pricing for Visitor Attractions. The companies are sharing these strategic insights into how pricing variations can be effectively used by destinations to give guests a better experience, increase sales and optimise attendance. The research interviewed 550 adults in the UK who have been to a visitor attraction in the last 12 months and identified two groups, those who tend towards visiting leisure venues such as theme parks, water parks and adventure playgrounds, and those prefer cultural destinations including museums, galleries and historic properties. The research revealed that dynamic pricing is not widely understood amongst the public, with less than a quarter of respondents having heard the term previously. However, when presented with examples of dynamically priced tickets 80% of respondents chose to buy there and then. Andy Povey, Managing Director for UK and Ireland at Convious explains: "This fits with our experience in the real world - consumers like to get a deal and tend to purchase earlier when they are offered a lower price. One key finding was that price options, alongside scarcity and uncertainty, have the ability to change behaviour. When presented with different prices by time of day, 42% of respondents said that they would choose to visit at a cheaper time. *Povey* Again this fits with our real world experience. Attractions that use dynamic pricing to manage distribution of visitors through the week and even day report increases in income and guest satisfaction A major outcome from the research is that clear communication is essential to help people make a good choice and understand how to benefit from the variations in pricing. *Povey* People generally accept that prices can be different at different times of day / days of the week or month. Venues that focus on communicating why the price has changed rather than the different prices are not answering the question that the guest is asking. When faced with some criteria for price variations, 68% don’t think it’s ok to increase prices when a destination is busier than usual, but 61% think it is ok to lower prices when it is less busy. Dynamic pricing is most effective when simple and transparent and doesn’t bombard people with too many options. Andy Povey, Managing Director for UK and Ireland at Convious explains: Dynamic pricing has been a hot topic in the attractions industry for the past 5 years or so. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of assuming that Dynamic means Increased and while it’s true Dynamic Pricing does allow increases to ticket prices that is not the largest benefit. When implemented correctly Dynamic Pricing can improve guest experience, broaden and diversify audiences and improve financial results for the venue. Robin Cantrill-Fenwick, Chief Executive, Baker Richards comments: “The research highlights something many attractions will recognise - there is intrinsic price sensitivity in the market because of the economic conditions. However, dynamic pricing is an increasingly popular tool which encourages visitors to book in advance, helping the attraction to predict and manage their costs, and providing a range of price points to the prospective visitor. The experience in other industries has been that so long as prospective visitors are aware that prices are fluid but fair, they accept the practice and adapt their behaviour to take advantage of savings. “By educating visitors into this way of thinking, destinations can manage capacity, increase visitor numbers and give guests a better experience by spreading visitor ingress. At a time when incomes are being hit across the board, dynamic pricing can arguably be fairer than a traditional concessions model, as it opens up lower prices to anyone who needs them - so long as they book early.” ENDS Editor’s Contact: Emily Burrows, Plaster, T: +44 (0)1179530320, E: emilyb@weareplaster.com ## Convious acquires Tap App (formerly Tapperuse) offering a seamless leisure customer journey across devices URL: https://www.convious.com/blog/newsroom/convious-acquires-tap-app Convious, the leading eCommerce platform for the Leisure industry, has added Tap (Tick and Pay), a mobile technology company, to its portfolio. With this addition, Convious moves towards its goal to create seamless customer experiences across devices and channels, something crucial considering the increasingly growing online presence of the leisure industry, reinforced by COVID-19 pandemic’s impact. *“True eCommerce is long due in the Leisure industry. We are thrilled to see our fast-growing customer base using our platform and reap the benefits of reducing dependency on third parties and selling more direct to visitors. COVID -19, changed the market, and ‘online’ is more important than ever. By adding the Tap technology and its team, we extend our offering to native mobile apps at a fraction of the usual cost while having the full benefits.”* – Said Camiel Kraan, CEO of Convious. ## About Tap from Convious By adding Tap’s disruptive technology, Convious now offers a seamless mobile experience to the leisure market through the Tap app. Wellness, theme parks, zoos, and museums, can now improve their guests’ experience and engagement by benefiting from new relevant features such as: in-app and location-based messaging, GPS with geo-fenced in-venue crowd control and heat-mapping, access and capacity management, and even mobile advertising, with no development cost. ![Tap Convious](/blog/newsroom/convious-acquires-tap-app/inline-1.png) *“Convious is Europe’s leading SaaS platform for the leisure industry. We strongly believe in their vision of a full eCommerce platform for Leisure, making it an easy choice to team up and help more leisure venues businesses perform better online and offline ”.* - Ronald de Groot, Product Owner at Tap. By using the Tap app, Convious partners access real-time guest data, invaluable for new revenue opportunities, operational improvements, and making sure everyone is safe and compliant with COVID-19 regulations. The app is now available in the App Store and Google Play Store for venues to offer to their guests. Convious already empowers more than 100 businesses’ growth in the leisure industry through its automated AI-powered ticketing software and its cutting-edge Crowd Control technology that allows partners to manage a smarter visitor distribution for a safer visit. Tap (Tick and Pay) is a “Pay As You Go’ app that helps leisure venues meet the needs of their visitor’s lifestyle by using a unique and innovative technology by which they can seamlessly book their visit and pay only for the time spent in the venue. This empowers leisure businesses to build a stronger relationship with their customers before, during, and after the visit, increasing their reach, turnover, and margin