As Sinek once said, “One of the challenges of good times is that it brings laziness.” This means that whether you’re the only option in your area that provides a certain curated mix of attractions, or that you have your recurring visitors – it doesn’t end there.

Although it may sound a bit like a broken record, knowing your customer, how to be of service, and how to truly personalize their guest experience has become a main topic of interest. There are, however, many specialists, opinions, and approaches.

Here are a few key things to remember:

Perhaps you’ve Googled once or twice – “How to Increase the Guest Experience”, and many articles popped up, mostly aimed at the retail or hotel industry. Why? Because those types of businesses mostly deal with a lot of customers on a daily basis, thus they have to have a specific, generally applied framework.

However, what about your guests? Those people walk into your facility not to buy something, not just grab a bite, or spend the night, but to be transformed through the experiences you provide.

The transformation economy is booming. And your guests’ journeys are impacted by it. When you show care and positive reinforcement to each of your demographic, they’ll know it, feel it, and talk about it.

Many operators believe the guest’s first five to ten minutes are crucial because it’s the moment when they determine if they will enjoy their stay at the center and how they feel about the place. This is impacted by how your attractions are positioned and by the way you’re leading them through the facility.

RELATED: How VR Enhances Guest Experience in Entertainment Venues

You can redefine the guest experience in many ways. Digital adoption, such as virtual queues and easy online bookings, and focusing on high-quality hospitality are a few examples. A key feature of the customer experience is the addition of a range of entertainment opportunities. By providing a well-curated place for guests to relax, disconnect, and spend time with family and friends, your Family Entertainment Center is keeping up with the new expectations of guests.

Your offering has to upscale the previous ones and create that premium feel of social connection and competitiveness.

For example, let’s take Virtual Reality as an attraction. With booming popularity over the past few years, you can find plenty of VR options on the market that can enhance your attraction mix. It’s all about adapting to the demographic’s and market’s needs, right?

The draw of immersive attractions is their ability to create curiosity, especially when they’re added to the existing attraction mix. But here comes the question… How do you reinforce your guests coming back for more, how do you create that space to not make it a 1-time experience?

Sure, there are various ways to encourage that. It truly depends on the type of VR attraction, how many guests can play at once, how many games the attraction has, and so on…

RELATED: 6 Reasons Why You Should Choose a 6 Player VR Arena

With VR, people are looking for an experience they can’t get at home, that’s fully immersive and more competitive than just playing by themselves in the comfort of their own homes.

So let’s ask the question again: How can you offer that unique experience of trying out VR to your demographic? Is a competitive game enough? Probably, but not quite. Is a great product design enough? Most likely, but it may not satisfy your guests’ every need.

One of the biggest struggles in the Family Entertainment Center business are Attractions that run at less than 50% of their capacity and lines forming everywhere.

A nightmare! You lose revenue instead of maximizing the attraction’s potential, but what’s there to do? It’s not always comfortable for your guests to play a multiplayer game with folks they don’t know so you end up with an investment that often runs at half its capacity.

By analyzing multiple data on how people visit FECs, they usually either come in smaller groups, like a couple on a date, 2 or 3 friends enjoying their weekend, or a family of 4. And that’s key to the guest experience… Allowing people to enjoy their time in their group. But what if you have an attraction that can accommodate more than 4 people, let’s say 6, how can you maximize the attraction’s potential?

Answer A: You mix up the groups and have strangers play a game

Answer B: You only occupy the attraction by half so you can maximize the guest experience and have them enjoy a unique entertainment moment.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the solution was that easy…? Let’s dive into ways you can increase that guest experience and create unique moments by not sacrificing your ROI and capacity throughput.

In this article, we’ve discussed VR, but more generally. Let’s take a 6-Player Arena, our flagship attraction, Arkadia.

The 6 Player Arena focuses on interactivity, memorability, and active moments. It creates an entertainment experience that takes the customer on an outstanding journey. When the customer gears up with the VR headset they immerse into a whole new world. All of these elements, plus high-quality VR content enhance the guest experience.

Pretty interesting, yet common to the industry of Location-Based VR. But how many times did 6 people come into a facility and make an attraction fully occupied? Chances are that it doesn’t happen as frequently, but it surely depends on the demographic.

This is where the differentiation comes through with the Multi-Game Sessions feature.

With Arkadia VR Arena’s feature, called Multi-Game Sessions, we created the first fully-booked arena at all times! This allows operators to welcome 2 different groups inside the arena.

How Does it Impact the Guest Experience?

Every group that’s playing has an individual experience, leaderboard, and, of course… their own thrills of fun! The FEC gets the highest throughput and revenue per game session. 6 people are playing simultaneously while not interfering with one another and helping out the operator with onboarding the guests!

Check out the video to see how Arkadia’s Multi-Game Sessions works!

As mentioned above, technology is awesome only if it’s helpful to the guests. One way you can enhance the guest experience is to invite them in and personalize the conversation.

Showcasing your guests’ best reviews will generate social proof, and instantly promote your business to like-minded individuals. This means that you’ll create anticipation for your guests that haven’t stepped foot in your facility. Moreover, make customers curious about what you have to offer using social media. Use it to display sneak peeks of your high-quality facilities and promote your latest offers.

Be consistent and transparent with your messaging and branding to create trust.