Building Stronger Guest Connections

1. Stop Broadcasting; Start Understanding.

During the session “From Attention to Action: Turning Social Reach into Revenue,” Floortje Goenee, success manager at Deluux, suggests that as much as 90% of the industry still relies on posting announcements rather than content that communicats a feeling, emotion, or experience.

Her advice is straightforward—“Stop posting announcements and try to see or feel what the audience wants to see on their phone.”

At Europa-Park, Glenn Homburg, senior social media manager and lead paid social, sees particularly strong results from content visitors cannot create themselves. The park used that approach with Voltron—a new roller coaster—taking audiences behind the scenes from construction through opening.

“If we have angles that our visitors can’t do, it really performs well over and over and over again,” Homburg says.

Homburg also urges attractions to look beyond detailed targeting, research the “desires and pains” driving their audiences and consider how their experiences can respond.

Luuk Goenee, strategy director and founder of Deluux, takes the idea a step further—rather than simply capturing existing demand, Goenee believes attractions should focus on creating it through experiences.

2. Use Technology to Deepen Connection, Not Distract from It

Attraction operators face a similar question once guests arrive: when does technology enrich an experience, and when does it begin to compete with it?

During “Future Zoo: Can Digital and Traditional Experiences Coexist in a Zoo?,” Dominic Strange, chief operating officer at Chester Zoo, argues that the physical experience should remain paramount.

“It’s got to be the physical experience you start with, and it’s a layer on top which enhances,” he says.

“Gone are the days” when visitors were content to passively walk around and look at things, Strange says. Guests increasingly seek immersion, closer connections with animals, and opportunities to participate, with digital experiences potentially facilitating that involvement.

Kieran Stanley, CEO and creative director of Dan Pearlman Experience Architecture, points to another opportunity: telling stories a physical zoo cannot. At Aalborg Zoo in Denmark, Stanley’s team created a fully immersive digital aquarium because the zoo lacked space for a physical one. Digital experiences could also show extinct species or animals that cannot be physically housed.

“There’s a huge opportunity, definitely digitally, to tell other stories that you can’t otherwise physically tell,” Stanley says.

Strange also points to Chester Zoo’s virtual tours, which reach tens of thousands of schoolchildren around the world with its conservation message.

Ultimately, the panelists agree that the question is not physical or digital, but how the two work together. Technology should support connection, rather than take over from it.

3. Empower Visitors to Make the Moment Count

Technology is only one part of the guest experience. Sometimes, connection comes from something much less complicated: another person.

During “Real Connections: Creating Moments That Matter,” Neil Wilson and Stefan Burian explore how frontline teams influence the guest journey and how small interactions can transform an experience.

Wilson recalls waiting for Kraken at SeaWorld Orlando when bad weather temporarily closed the roller coaster. The team kept guests engaged with a SeaWorld quiz and Quik Queue line bypass passes as prizes. Even those who did not particularly enjoy the quiz, Wilson notes, could recognize the team was making an effort during a frustrating disruption.

Burian takes the discussion further, arguing that not every meaningful interaction can be planned.
“The most and best memorable experiences can’t be scripted or planned,” he says. “Many of them or some of them may just happen,” Wilson says.

What operators can design are the conditions that allow those moments to happen—flexibility in processes and enough freedom for employees to respond in the moment. Burian also urges designers and experience creators to involve operational teams “very, very early” in the design process, helping prevent problems that might later compromise the design or experience.

In other words, human connection cannot always be scripted, but the environment that enables it can be designed.

Across the three sessions, the common thread is not a particular platform, technology or service technique. It is attention; understanding what guests want to discover; how they want to participate; and when a human interaction can turn an ordinary moment into something worth remembering.
Stronger connections may ultimately begin not with adding more to the guest experience, but with paying closer attention to the people experiencing it.