Tuesday Tactics: Envisioning a Different Visitor Experience
Phases of Visitor Experience: Planning, Arriving, Experiencing and Remembering. While each of these phases will remain for your visitors, it is likely that elements of each will need to be different in the future. Now is the time to use your team’s creativity to envision change.
Planning: How can your organization think differently about social distancing for each of your recreational assets/activities (e.g., trails, cabins, campgrounds, beaches, etc.) ? Your answers may result in the need for a new visitor-use management strategy. This may mean your organization will need to change the types of pre-planning information shared with visitors. In turn, you may need to think differently about how, where, and when you communicate. It may mean you leverage your existing reservation platforms in different ways.
Arriving: How does your organization currently greet and orient your visitors? Does human contact remain? If not, what does “contactless” visitor orientation look like for you? How does this change your staffing levels, how does this change your cleaning of fee machines and other equipment? How does your on-site signage need to change?
Experiencing: As humans we desire to gather, and our public places are where we do so. Now is the time to look at your recreational locations and determine a “carrying capacity” that works within CDC guidelines. This may result in a different visitor experience. Public agencies need to feel comfortable adopting new approaches to visitor experiences.
Remembering: As we have seen, the American public is “going outside” wherever possible. The public wants to be in the outdoors. Assume that most of your visitors will be willing to change their behaviors for the opportunity to be in the outdoors. Also, you need to plan for that small percentage of visitors who “just can’t seem to follow the directions” . Work to create a new and different memory for your visitors. Your public desires and deserves your most creative efforts during these times.
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