What Can Visitor Attractions Do To Enhance the Solo Visitor Experience?
Picture the last holiday advert you saw. Imagine a poster for a sightseeing tour or heritage site. Can you recall the main image on the last restaurant website you looked at? I’m willing to bet all the images in these marketing campaigns were of couples, friendship groups and/or families. Not singles or solo visitors.
I find this peculiar because when I visit cultural attractions I see plenty of people exploring alone, especially at art galleries and museums.
When travelling for work I often see other business travellers dining alone or venturing out to visit the city landmarks by themselves. I myself have just been in Las Vegas for INTIX (International Ticketing Association) where, although I met plenty of familiar faces, I journeyed alone. Now, I’m a digital nomad in Nicaragua working from a retreat where the majority of people are fellow solo travellers.
Culturally, especially in Britain, there has been somewhat of a taboo around being a lone diner or visitor but often going solo is a choice. Personally, there are quite a few attractions, events, or activities I prefer to experience alone. That way I can immerse myself fully and can decide what I want to see, when and how long I want to take. No compromising with someone whose passion for the attraction or event may not match my own.
With business travellers and digital nomadic lifestyles on the rise, more people are likely to find themselves in culturally rich cities/regions that offer a wide range of eye-opening experiences and people won’t want these experiences diluted because they’re going alone.
Solo travel is also trending and Gen Z are far more open to solo adventures. According to a survey conducted by StudentUniverse in 2023, 58.3% of Gen Z women are interested in solo travel. Full Fat’s 2021 report also found that 58% of Generation Z would be happy to fly solo when attending events and experiences.
Therefore, it’s time for visitor attractions, activities or tours, to embrace the single-ticket customer and find ways to enhance the solo visitor experience for them.
Let’s explore some of the ways that museums, galleries, tours or attractions, sightseeing tour operators and other visitor attractions can better appeal to and reward solo visitors.
Making Visitor Attractions More Inclusive For Solo Visitors
Many visitor attractions excel at tailoring experiences to families. There are treasure trails, kid zones and child-focused interactive learning and gaming hubs. Groups are also well catered for, often with discounted tickets and group tours. However, the solo visitor’s needs are assumed to be taken care of as a matter of course. This is not always the case.
It can be daunting or disconcerting to be a lone explorer. Sometimes, visitor attractions miss opportunities to make solo visitors feel valued.
One example is that often single-ticket visitors will be funnelled into the same queue as families and groups who have different needs. They can get stuck waiting to be granted entry to an attraction behind a family who are being given packs for children or waiting with their ticket in hand whilst staff are sorting audio tour devices for big groups. Attractions might consider speedy entry for single-ticket visitors, some of whom may be visiting during a work lunch break or killing time before a flight or train home.
Another issue of timing for solo visitors is that although some will be retired and therefore free to visit during the daytime, others may not. Business travellers for example, as well as locals working during regular opening hours. Although weekends may be an option and non-workers and flexible workers may be free to visit at any time, daytimes and especially weekends are often high footfall and therefore not necessarily ideal for a solo visitor. Attractions that offer special opening times can bring in non-typical visitors, making access more inclusive and diverse.
Saatchi Gallery hosts Saatchi Lates scheduled throughout the year where the gallery is open until 9pm. Sometimes the exhibitions stay open too and this creates opportunities for those who cannot or prefer not to visit during the day. Furthermore, it also allows attractions to tailor their offering. Add a glass of wine to the ticket price maybe, or bring in some live music to enhance an evening experience?
Cost is also worth some consideration. There is a premium on being a solo traveller and discounts are rarely given. There can even be a single supplement in some scenarios (including hotels and holiday packages). This does little to appeal to the solo visitor and, though it’s not common practice to charge single-ticket holders extra at visitor attractions, there are incentives not always geared towards solo visitors.
Dynamic pricing can be controversial but in some cases, it could be leveraged to relieve the extra cost burden on solo travellers. When was the last time you saw a campaign pushing the initiative ‘come when it’s quieter’, offering a discounted rate? This would benefit both solo visitors and the industry because it could increase footfall in the low season. The few campaigns that are geared towards solo travellers tend to focus on luxury experiences with premium pricing. Unfortunately, many travelling solo are unable to afford this price band, so it’s important to look at how the average lone traveller is being catered for.
Reward schemes can play a part in keeping single-ticket customers returning. For attractions that don’t charge entry fees, this could be used for onsite facilities such as the canteens or coffee shops which may encourage purchases that might otherwise not be made at all.
Food, Beverage, And The Solo Visitor
Do you know how many single-ticket visitors use your onsite dining? I ask because many solo travellers find dining alone uncomfortable. One of the reasons is that restaurant tables are often set for two or more. Remember those scenes in TV sitcoms and films where the waiter clears the extra place setting leaving the lone diner squirming? It’s a very real experience. But dining alone doesn’t need to be awkward.
In other parts of the world, dining alone is more common and so the set-up is geared towards it. Counter dining is more commonplace and removes the stigma of the empty chair opposite, which is one of the reasons sushi restaurants, with their belt system, are often more appealing to those eating alone. Looking into how your catering is tailored to lone diners is important if you want to help solo visitors get the most out of their experience. One lone diner seated next to another may even encourage conversation and looking at menu pricing is a good idea too. Sometimes, there’ll be special menu options, such as low-cost kids meals or a dinner for two and a bottle of wine package for couples, but do you have a drink and main course offer for solo diners?
Inclusivity can be especially appealing for solo visitors considering experiences where food plays a bigger part, such as river cruises, steam trains and viewing tower experiences where taking in the view whilst enjoying a meal is a key part of the experience.
Consider how you might adapt this for solo guests and how your ticket booking system may allow you to do this in advance, with pre-booking being an option that can be more easily tailored to the customer. For example, asking if a single-ticket purchaser would prefer to be grouped with others for their meal or drinks.
How Can Technology Support Solo Travellers?
Earlier, I talked about the difficulty of solo visitors being held up by larger groups. Streamlined entry is one solution but digitalisation could help us take this a stage further.
Solo visitors may be more interested in particular areas of an attraction and have no interest in exploring all that’s on offer. For instance, solo adults may skip sections designed for young families. This can be addressed with a site map at the entry point, however, digital personalisation can be used to enhance the experience – perhaps through a personalised app.
In my article, How Visitor Attractions Can Make The Most Of Data-Driven Personalisation, we discussed the ability of some ticketing systems to use data taken at the point of booking to provide a more personalised onsite experience. Harnessing information and leveraging technology, a single-ticket visitor could be given a recommended route around an attraction and even be able to design their own path based on their interests. Visitor attractions would need an app for this, so the visitor could access this onsite but this could also create the opportunity for the app to tailor future visits based on what a user has already seen, as well as accounting for their interests.
Depending on the nature of the attraction, you may also point solo visitors towards quiet zones and adult learning sections.
At the point of online ticket purchase, solo visitors may wish to pre-book audio guides or tours to enhance their experience and save time queuing onsite.
Giving the customer the ability to manage their booking also allows visitors to make bookings earlier, knowing they can change them if needed. Some solutions already do this very well and, since one of the benefits of solo travelling is flexibility, operators who allow bookers to amend their plans as needed may better appear to single-ticket bookers.
You may even introduce ways solo travellers can connect with other lone visitors, perhaps through social forums or buddy apps.
Properly utilised, data can not only aid better onsite experience but can work to tailor post-visit marketing to solo visitors. Perhaps highlighting future exhibitions or attraction events suited to solo guests.
If your current software doesn’t have these capabilities, or if you’re unsure of whether it does, ReWork can assist you in exploring the full functionality and potential of software providers to support you in digital personalisation. Find out more about how we can help you grow through more robust and enhanced technology partnerships.
Gearing Visitor Attraction Events To Solo Visitors
Special events can enhance the experience of solo visitors at visitor attractions. Many solo visitors will not just be attending as a way of killing time or taking in some culture. They may be there for a deeper understanding or more in-depth learning. That being, talks, lectures and conversation-centred events can be particularly appealing to solo visitors. Since listening and learning are key, there is no stigma associated with attending alone and these events can be a great option for those seeking entertainment and thoughtful experiences. It can also be an opportunity to network and make connections through shared interests.
The Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm does this particularly well. They host a range of talks as well as unique entertainment experiences and these often take place straight after the museum closes, which can encourage visitors to stay and purchase last-minute tickets, but also means ticket-holders might be more inclined to visit the attraction beforehand. There are special guest speakers, subject-based talks, lectures and live music and performance evenings too. Something for every curious person, whether they are attending alone or not. Yet, naturally accommodating and perhaps particularly beneficial to solo attendees.
Not only should attractions explore special events that appeal to solo visitors, but they should also consider how they are marketed to potential solo ticket purchasers. Images on marketing materials, for instance, should be inclusive of solo attendees and the language should be inclusive too. Whilst there are plenty of campaigns for couple experiences, especially leading up to Valentine’s Day and other holidays, you see far fewer campaigns geared towards the curious and entertainment-seeking person who might be, whether through want or need, flying solo, like companies like Flashpack (which I had the pleasure of being part of just before Covid)
Supporting Solo Visitors Post-Visit
Single-ticket visitors may not always be prioritised but they are very valuable. After all, they’ll also be leaving you reviews. They may well spread the word – good or bad – amongst their friends and some could even be digital nomads with a tendency to blog and/or head to social media to share their experiences. Beware not meeting the needs of the solo traveller – they may have a long journey after their visit with only their phone in hand and more than enough time to write a Google review.
Reviews should be encouraged, of course, but if you want good ones then you must ensure your experience is fulfilling for all types of visitors. Let yourself down with single-ticket purchases and you may lose ratings on Tripadvisor and other impactful marketing channels.
When you’ve done all you can do pre-booking and onsite, consider your post-booking follow-up. Digital experiences can appeal to lone travellers, particularly after having visited learning-based attractions. Online or in-app quizzes to review what someone has learnt can be a good way to demonstrate how valuable the experience has been for the visitor. From this, or similar post-visit digital activities, you may wish to request and link to an online review.
Furthermore, post-visit is a great opportunity to market future experiences, events and benefits of return visits to your guests. However, if this is not personalised it can backfire. Your data should be able to aid the decisions made around how you remarket to former visitors so that you don’t send promotions for couples events to single-ticket purchasers, or send family discounts and such. Remarketing can build life-long relationships with former visitors, but it can also ostracise them if you don’t take care to tailor your conversation to them.
It amazes me how many leisure, attractions or experience operators are still not using their data effectively – this does not need to be complicated or labour intensive. You don’t even need a CRM solution, sometimes just having access to your ticketing system’s database and being able to easily report/segment your customer lists is the most effective way.
A single ticket purchase may be a drop in the ocean in terms of what you need to help your visitor attraction/experience/event survive or even thrive but drops make an ocean, and that makes every ‘single’ one vital. We should explore what experience operators can do to enhance the solo visitor experience, not only because every ticket purchase is valuable to us, but because our experiences should be valuable to every single visitor.
