Improve Visitor Attraction Management and Tickets Sales in 2024

Tourism in Ireland continues to flourish, with Dublin unsurprisingly emerging as a standout destination. The city has benefited from an increased number of city breaks and day trips, driven by its travel accessibility and rich selection of attractions.

When it comes to determining your success as a visitor attraction, ticket sales and revenue are paramount. With Dublin’s success helping other Irish attractions flourish, it’s crucial to find ways to maximise visitor numbers, especially through tourism and visitor spend.

Getting customers through the door is one thing but getting them to stay and spend is another entirely. Read on to find out our tips to ensure a successful second half of 2024!

3 Steps to Increase Your Ticket Sales from Tourism

With tourism gaining popularity in Ireland again, it is time for local businesses to capitalise. Whether you’re located in the heart of Dublin or perhaps a little further afield, the whole country is feeling the benefits of Ireland’s upturn in tourism, which gives you the chance to boost your ticket sales.

Here are three ways to do exactly that:

1. Enhance Your Online Presence

Your attraction probably has a website and social media accounts, but are you making the most of them? Consider reaching out to some local Irish PR, news, or travel companies to share your news, successes, and key developments, as the articles they write can then be used to send readers to your website to find out more.

Alternatively, consider utilising paid social media advertisements to promote your attraction further afield, targeting customers in the UK or on mainland Europe who may be looking at flight or ferry prices.

2. Collaborate with Travel Agencies and Hotels

One of the best ways to increase eyes on your attraction is to approach established travel agencies or local hotels and provide promotional materials, such as leaflets or brochures, which can be collected by or handed to their guests.

You could also set up package deals and collaborate with these businesses to give their customers better deals on their tickets, allowing you to benefit from a greater number of international tourists.

3. Offer Discounts and Promotions

Creating special ticket prices, such as early bird specials or family packages, can help provide greater value for money for people planning a holiday or looking for things to do.

These kinds of deals help reward those who may be planning their travel early and can boost footfall significantly, especially if these deals are advertised with the aforementioned travel agencies and hotels!

2 Ways to Increase Visitor Dwell Time

On average, day trippers spend a little under five hours in Dublin, highlighting the city’s significant pull and the opportunities that gives your attraction to thrive.

But that also means that your attraction has only a fraction of that to make your visitors spend as much as possible whilst there. The longer they stay, the more they are likely to spend.

Whether buying lunch, animal feed, show tickets, or some merchandise at your gift shop, these smaller sales can add up, and are especially important to charity organisations like museums or heritage sites.

Here are a couple ways to help extend the length of stay:

1. Provide Interactive Exhibits or Activities

Finding new ways to make your attraction engaging to your audience, whether it’s the exhibits in a zoo or museum or the queues for the rides at a theme park, is a crucial part of improving and extending the visitor experience.

By having innovative and imaginative experiences throughout, your guests are more likely to want to experience everything you have to offer and will love being there in the process. One example is to provide a tablet or computer that contains additional information and quick, easy games to help people learn more about the exhibit they are attached to.

Don’t forget to translate these interactive elements into popular languages too, as this will help guests from anywhere in the world enjoy them like the locals!

2. Offer Engaging Entertainment Options

If your attraction has the facilities for it, consider implementing live performances or seasonal events that can draw in huge crowds on a regular basis.

Also, consider providing workshops or demonstrations that add value to your attraction, such as animal presentations or craft classes, that can help your guests learn something new and even take something home with them.

These kinds of limited-time sessions will excite people and make them more likely to return when they’re next in the area. It will also help lead to positive reviews and show how much you care about the visitor experience!

Other Strategies to Improve Sales in 2024

The visitor attraction sector is vast and varied, and every attraction may need to try different things based on their industry. Here are a few other quick suggestions that might help you!

Leverage Technology to Engage Visitors

There are several ways technology could be utilised to provide a better experience to your guests or help get them through the door. First, if you do not offer online ticketing already, you absolutely should, as it is the key to increasing ticket sales immediately.

Secondly, if your attraction is large enough, you could develop a mobile app that provides additional information, maps, or interactive guides to enhance the visitor experience.

Alternatively, you could provide some online tours on your website to help give visitors a taste of what they might experience on the day.

Lastly, consider producing doing paid advertisements on Google or social media sites to help increase visibility and potential customers.

Customer Feedback and Development

Part of improving any business is taking customer reviews into account and making the changes that matter. You could email your guests surveys to provide helpful feedback to better understand their needs and preferences.

Also, encourage your guests to leave Google reviews and actively monitor and respond to these reviews to help boost your public profile.

If you have any kind of annual pass or subscription available to your most loyal guests, consider using a membership management tool to regularly ask them for feedback and provide reason to do so, as they’re the people who’s opinions you value most!

Community Engagement

If you have the facilities, it might be worth opening your attraction up to the local community to act as a venue for festivals, markets, and more. You could also partner with local school and businesses to offer educational visits or promotions, which can help strengthen your relationship with the local area.

Sustainability Initiatives

Many attractions are looking at eco-friendly business practices, but actively promoting and talking about them can help attract good news stories and environmentally conscious guests.

One way you could do this is by working towards and achieving relevant green certifications to help boost your reputation and marketability.

Get in Touch to Help Boost Your Sales

Vennersys are a leading developer of attraction EPoS and visitor attraction management solutions with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. We know what we’re talking about when it comes to boosting sales, and we want to help you.

Our team are on hand to help consult you on best practices and to demonstrate our management and EPoS attraction software to help you achieve higher sales numbers for the rest of the year.

Book a free demonstration today to find out how VenposCloud could help you or get in touch with our office by calling 01908735274 or emailing contact@vennersys.com.