20/11/06

“Personalization – The Entertainment Experience!” (#519)

Stinger REPORT Skinny!

(25/10/06) To increase the revenue in a traumatic period in the entertainment visitor business, ‘Personalization’ is seen as the new element to the experience. The creation of a method to make every visitor feel (and pay) as if they are a VIP is being achieved with technology that sees an automated industry using the latest serving systems, allowing ’Paper Less Ticketing’, ’Queue Less Attractions’, and finally ‘Money Less Payment’ – the Stinger covers the emerging technology in this field and the thinking behind their new service.

Main REPORT:

It has become all too obvious that entertainment facilities ranging from attractions venues to FEC’s have to expand the revenue generation capabilities – the same way that most consumer brands look to maximization. For theme parks and venues the suggestion of new pricing models and longer opening hours are all being considered. The one new element to this however is the removal of the methodology of treating the guests as a whole and looking at how to increase individual revenue they can generate – personalizing their experience!

The Very Important Person theory of ‘milking’ the guest – offering special guest benefits to VIP paying individuals has seen an increase, but technology now makes it possible to expand the number of specialized services that offer a value-added benefit, establishing a personal relationship with the guest and so profile the experience (tailoring) to suit their needs which they would be prepared to pay additional for.

The ‘personalization’ of the guest experience can be best demonstrated by a series of technologies gathered for this feature by the Stinger:

The ‘MuMa – Music Machine’ and their ‘SMS Jukebox’ offered the ability for a patron to use their mobile phone to text their selection on the facility’s jukebox. This virtual jukebox offers a simplistic ‘select’ – ‘text’ – and ‘play’ methodology, with a much wider ability to use Internet-based storage. The old style jukebox now placed in the palm of the guest’s hand via their mobile phone.

The phrase “…have it your way”, has been used by a popular fast-food burger chain, but the hospitality market is looking at realizing this slogan via technology. As previously covered the company Self-Service Kiosks and their ‘Xpress Order and Payment’ system has boosted considerably Burger King restaurant chains utilization and servings with a vast rise in per capita revenue. Other automated serving systems such as Escapism Media’s ‘The Escape Pod’ touchscreen interface with client and servers mark a new way to maximize choice with specialize delivery. The uWink automated ‘uWink Table’ experience provides the keystone of the revenue model and experience for their brand of site.

From automated serving, the personalized visitor entrance system is another aspect of development. Products such as ‘EXIO’ developed by Gavitec offers a paperless ticketing system, creating a terminal allowing barcode images sent as a Multimedia Message Service (MMS) package that is displayed on the user mobile phone and can be read by special kiosks. Ticketing technology provider ts.com Ltd., teamed up with its partners Trinity Mobile and Gavitec to pilot the latest in SMS event ticketing for the Salford City Reds Rugby Club.

The use of mobile phone seems to be one of the growing routes to market, ‘CellQ’ has been seen presented recently (a client of Stinger owner KWP) offers the ultimate package for venues with extensive queue lines and a need to maximize visitation and secondary spend. The cell phone and barcode wristband system allows the booking to ride venue attractions, reserving a space and time to ride and then rather than stand in the line utilizes venue amenities while waiting to take their slot informed via their phone, the first venue to test this site in Europe being Wallaby-Land. Another system that works on developing the possibilities of ticketing systems include the ‘Mobi-Ticket’ system from PNC Media using radio transmission.

The need to appeal to the 250 million people that visit more than 50 international theme parks has seen greater park guest technology and utilizing the ubiquitous mobile phone carried by the visitor is a major trend – Companies such as Image Plus Digital and their ‘IPD’ system sends pictures on rides sent to your mobile phone, one of the first venues utilizing this is Legoland Windsor in the UK.

A more complicated version of this idea has been presented by Venue Solutions who through their partnership with Sony to create a RFID (RadioWare) system for venue technology that allows wristband-wearing guests to be tracked by the various cameras round the park. The ‘YourDay’ (in this case ‘YourDay: in the Theme Park’) system will be installed at Alton Towers to commence 2007. The RFID system allowing the venue to sell a package that has a take-away element a DVD of the collected 30 minutes of images, collected when a RFID wearer passes them, given on exiting the venue to those visitors that paid to be part of the scheme.

The application of the perfect experience, personalized to your needs, seem to go hand in hand with RFID development. Sports facility and Live performance ticketing company Tickets.com has already started to look at RFID and mobile phone ‘paper-less’ systems. Meanwhile famous Omi Tickets has embraced the Internet to allow guests to personalize their experience online with their ‘OmniOnline’ service creating specialty tickets.

From ticketing to e-money itself – the ‘EDY’ system devised by Sony’s breakaway operation has gained vast momentum in Asia, with development of the first European systems already starting to appear. SEGA have deployed their first facility that is wholly run by the Sony eMoney system. The first opened this month with the Tokyo based ‘G-Link Shibuya Dougenhill’ store is located in the same retail district as the ‘Bee SHIBUYA’ – SEGA’s recreation facility. The G-Link facility using the RFID empowered payment system has all the major amusement machines running e-payment.

What Could this all Mean:

The future looks very interesting that not only will entertainment venues offer a primary spend, but a secondary and even tertiary spend will be available through carefully developed interfaces between the visitor and the venue.

The theme park and entertainment venue market is renowned for its poor visitor information resource. Most sites looking at the group rather than the individual visitor, only now having to turn to new methodology to gather statistical data of the visitation to their venues; the personalized service allows a greater communication between the guest and the park and so a better idea of what they are prepared to spend.

Breaking Stinger News - When talking about ‘personalizing’ the player experience with the use of some means to store details regarding players – the applications of this in the attraction market are best illustrated by the biometric security investment made by Walt Disney Company at their Florida venue as covered in Stinger #501.

Recent news following the Biometric Finger shape scanner system deployed for Multiple Ticket guests at the park experience is that Walt Disney World – is that Disney plans to upgrade (move) to a fingerprint scanner. The old system stored analog information based on the shape of the guests’ fingers, which were scanned with the resulting data stored for security of ticket use. This will now be superseded by a new system that creates a numeric code from every fingerprint scanned. This departure has started alarm bells ringing.

Where the finger shape system offered a unique database of information only useful to WDC, the new fingerprint based system opens the possibility for the information to be linked to fingerprint records and used by law enforcement, or -- if badly secured – it could possibly be accessed and used by criminals. The concerns voiced by privacy advocates hit the American media with the news of Disney’s move, triggering questions of whether Disney could someday be subpoenaed for fingerprint information.

The potential use or abuse of this system goes against the original claims of the WDC when the finger shape system was first deployed. Concerns over the finger print information will continue to rumble up to the deployment of the hardware in the park (Walt Disney World) for the 2007 season.