Dubai Parks and Resorts

Overview

Every day in the dazzling city of Dubai, visitors to the breathtaking DXB Entertainments (previously known as Dubai Parks and Resorts) are treated to one of the most spectacular entertainment venues in the world. It’s home to three word-class theme parks and one water park, as well as Riverland Dubai, the grand entrance plaza, and a Polynesian-themed family resort.

Managing an entertainment venue of this scale has many challenges. One of which was the fact that DXB Entertainments had very little data about how visitors typically used their premises – their average visit duration, the paths they traversed, and how long they spent in specific zones. This information was critical, as it could provide DXB Entertainments with useful insight into customer engagement and behavior, helping them make informed decisions around staffing requirements, engagement strategies and promotional activities.

For the team at DXB Entertainments, the way forward was clear: if they wanted to deliver the most value and entertainment to visitors, while also ensuring high sales volumes and achieving financial goals, they would need to set their sights on consumer-focused management. To find the right solution to help them do this, they began asking questions:

“How can we refine and evolve marketing and promotional activities to cater to individual tastes, thereby improving customer experience and return business?”

“How can we optimize the service delivery and support to our visitors?”

These questions meant that the emphasis was now less inward looking: ‘how many tickets have we sold? And more outward looking: ‘what information and services do visitors need to make the most of their time at the park? And for this, DXB Entertainments needed to understand visitor intent and behavior in the park – and find the right partner to help them achieve it.

Choosing the right partner

After examining a few solutions on the market, it was clear to DXB Entertainments that Kloudspot’s Situational Awareness and Intelligence Platform had the structure, capabilities and reporting functions they needed. It was also simple enough for all team members to use on a daily basis.

The Kloudspot solution gave DXB Entertainments the ease, flexibility, and technological infrastructure they needed to tie all of their activities together and make visitors the center of their universe. The Kloudspot Platform could enhance their business intelligence with geospatial location, queue tracking, context and proximity to make relevant marketing offers and to improve experiences. This would, in turn, enable DXB to make data-driven decisions and proactively meet customer needs.

Data visualization of visitor traffic provides deep business insights

Through Kloudspot’s leading location analytic system, every possible aspect of pedestrian traffic movements within the park could be extracted. Not just the people counts, but also the measurements of:

• Traffic counts for various traffic modes (pedestrians, cars, etc.)
• Detailed time distribution of the traffic during the day
• Peak hour and peak counts of traffic in different parks and areas
• Exact footfall patterns and trajectories
• Time spent in the area
• Heat maps of more/less frequented spots across the park

Kloudspot’s location analytics provided a clear vision of visitor traffic at the park. Interactive maps and spatial analytics of the visitor traffic enabled management to see patterns in a whole new context, something that tables and charts alone simply could not do. This immediately helped DXB Entertainments discover new understandings of customer behavior and more effectively communicate and collaborate, using maps as a common language.

On-the-ground results

Understanding capture rate and the appeal of attractions

Measuring visitor footfall, movement and dwell times gave DXB Entertainments an estimate of the capture rate, engagement and appeal of various attractions in the parks, and an evaluation of key performance indicators of each location, namely ‘potential’ versus ‘sales’. In addition, the data helped identify high visibility areas where visitors could be targeted using smart digital displays and signage that could dynamically redirect movement of guests towards less-visited locations in real time.

Optimization of staff allocation

Managing visitors flow at various zones is critical for a good customer experience and the overall profitability of the organization. Oftentimes, the fast-paced and ambiguous environment of the park led to a misalignment of resources. Most commonly, staffing was handled manually by managers, a time consuming and sub-optimal process. There was a big need for spatial visibility that would help with resource management and staff allocation.

Kloudspot used the latest in machine learning and big data technologies to apply better staffing strategies by taking advantage of real-time and historical data. In doing so, managers at DXB Entertainments were able to align staff availability with location needs, and perform better and faster staff allocation.

Real-time knowledge of visitor traffic composition

Every visitor who entered Riverland instantly became a contact in the Kloudspot Platform and could be tied to marketing and promotional efforts in real-time. Although there was experiential knowledge of visitor profiles earlier, Kloudspot provided data-driven clarity into visitor behavior, enabling DXB Entertainments to adapt and engage people where they were. For example, a younger demographic of fans and visitors could be mobilized for the social media posts showcasing their time at the park.

Multi-site comparisons

Kloudspot aggregated visitor movements and dwell-time data for the various parks and locations. This enabled DXB Entertainments to generate comparisons between various parks to analyze user behavior across different locations at different periods of the week or month. They could then use this information to improvise engagement strategies.

Optimization of visitor engagement

DXB Entertainments realized they needed a better way to engage and start conversations that their audiences wanted to hear and engage with. In the past, they didn’t connect or provide the level of customer information/behavior the team needed to inform campaign performance and the resulting decision making. As a result, they found themselves using endless hours trying to connect disjointed information.

With Kloudspot, the progression of their visitor interaction developed from spreading a wide message for all audiences, to engaging with guests and using targeted messages based on data and past interactions, both on-site and online.

Making the customer the center of their universe

From the moment Dubai Parks started to use Kloudspot integration, they started to see positive results.