For a leisure or entertainment venue, a guest's journey starts long before they step through the front gate and continues until long after they leave. What you do during each step of this journey could help guests decide whether they go to your venue, how much they spend there, and how often they come back.
The idea might seem a bit intimidating. You need to think about what your guests see when they find you online or hear about your place from their friends. Then, you'll consider getting them to buy tickets or merchandise and enjoy themselves enough to want to come back again. Finally, you have to figure out how to turn them into loyal, long-term customers.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help with almost every part of the guest journey. Leisure industry AI tools assist with marketing, ticketing, crowd management, inventory, and every other thing that affects the guest experience.
Here is a closer look at how AI chatbots and other tools can make your guests' journeys better and make it easier for you to manage each step of the process.
Previsit Interactions
The first chance to use AI is when guests visit your site or app to check prices and purchase tickets. You can use an AI-powered chatbot like Smeetz Atlas to answer questions and offer guidance 24/7. The bot can let potential guests know about prices and upcoming promotions and can guide them through the reservation or ticketing process. Atlas can handle 30% of customer queries, leaving human staff available for higher-level jobs.
Dynamic pricing is another way AI can help before a person even sets foot in your venue. A pricing program looks at demand, competitor prices, time of week or year, and many other factors. It then chooses the optimal price. AI tools can also help build packages or bundles for guests or offer special group prices for B2B customers.
Both chatbots and dynamic pricing tools are automated, so you can give these benefits to guests without having to do any of the work by hand.
At Your Venue
AI can work in several different ways at your venue. Venue management AI tools can assist you and your guests and can help run the other parts of your business that affect guest experiences.
As guests arrive, you can use AI queue management tools to keep lines flowing and avoid bottlenecks. The program can also let staff know when certain areas are busy so you can have enough workers on hand to help with crowd flow. You can share this information with guests via mobile apps or text in real time. Then, you can let them know about less busy areas in other parts of the venue where they can get away from the crowds. A quality AI system specifically designed for use in entertainment venues can provide the right information so guests can manage their experience while they are at your venue.
Food and beverage (F&B) management tools can link ordering screens to inventory and kitchen staff activity. Staff can manage order flow and ensure they have enough of each ingredient to complete each order. If supplies are running low, they can adjust the menu and stop offering dishes that need out-of-stock ingredients. AI systems can also automatically order more inventory when an item reaches a low level. The same type of system can work for reordering items for the merchandise and retail operations in your venue.
Behind the Scenes
AI can work behind the scenes to help you manage your venue and make better decisions. High-quality AI tools have fast processing times, so they can help you make real-time decisions based on analysis of data.
For example, AI collects data from all the parts of a guest's journey: ticketing, food and merchandise purchases, use of your facilities, and interactions with staff. It can instantly analyze your performance in these areas and let you know how you're doing. The software can help you see trends in guest behaviour so you can adjust your plans to meet their needs better.
Analytics can also help with demand forecasting. The software can identify upcoming busy times so you can schedule enough staff and have enough resources. This is extremely helpful for giving each guest the best possible experience, even when your venue is very busy.
After the Visit
AI can automate communications with guests after they leave. You can ask the system to send emails asking for feedback or use AI tools to automatically check for mentions on social media.
Programs can also collect data on each guest's visit and use it to put them into certain segments for marketing. How does this help their customer journey? It allows you to send them relevant promotions, reminders, and marketing materials instead of clogging their inbox with emails that might not be interesting to them.
Another post-visit option is to use AI to manage a loyalty program for repeat guests. With segmentation and customer relationship management (CRM) data, you can give your guests perks and rewards they will actually use. This helps them have a more personalized experience and makes it more likely that they will return to your venue again.
How Smeetz Can Help
Smeetz is a unified commerce hub that can help you with all aspects of the guest journey. The advantage of using a tool like this is that it lets you manage all aspects of the guest experience in one place. We offer AI-powered dynamic pricing, a powerful chatbot for both sales and customer service, email automation, segmentation tools, and a platform for analytics.
Because it is a unified commerce platform, you can collect and use data from all guest touchpoints in one centralized place. The wealth of data gives the AI tools even more accuracy.
If you would like to learn more about the AI-powered tools that Smeetz offers, reach out to us or schedule a demo to see our system in action.
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