Case Study - Theme Park

This major theme park in Asia was structured as multiple business units – rides, shows, food & beverage, shopping, and accommodation – all of which were fiercely competitive and incentivized for individual unit performance. The unit heads understood that more footfall broadly translated to more business for everyone, and that any element of the whole experience might enhance or inhibit a decision to re-visit in future.

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Leaders wanted to know how each of their business units contributed to visitation.   Whichever unit was deemed to be attracting most traffic to the park would likely benefit from a better share of the shrinking marketing and media budget. The recently appointed head of Marketing needed an arm’s length analysis of drivers of visitation in order to defuse this looming conflict before it emerged.
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Analysis began with nearly two years of brand and campaign tracking data. But the theme park sector in Asia is heavily influenced by economic forces and geopolitics, both of which directly impact cross-border travel (tourists accounted for more than half of the client's revenue). So in addition to more than 500 variables extracted from the tracking survey relating to their own and competitors’ usage, imagery and campaign exposure, macro factors such as stock market performance, inflation, tourism arrivals, even weather patterns were added.

The client learned, as expected, that rides had the biggest individual contribution to a decision to visit.  But they also discovered that a much greater portion of visits was for multiple reasons – meaning the total visit experience was greater than the sum of its parts and that marketing support was significant in activating a desire to visit. The key to more footfall was to align communications with the natural synergies that were quantified between rides and shopping, or between F&B and accommodation.