The COVID-19 pandemic is still ripping the east coast of Australia and Melbourne is still days away from a projected peak of infections; and widespread, comprehensive testing is currently under way during their current 6 week lock down period.
And yet entertainment businesses that depend on large public gatherings to survive — movie theatres, music venues, sports arenas, theme parks — are already confronting some daunting and frustratingly uncertain questions about what comes next: How long will it take for people to feel safe enough to return to communal venues once they reopen, and what will it take to persuade them to do so?
Restaurants, cafes, indoor sports venues and especially nightclubs and bars — which require large groups of people to pack together in a confined space — are already seeing the most dire impact from the pandemic. According to one study, 49% to 56% of respondents said it will take “a few months” to “possibly never” for them to return to those venues post-crisis.
Given the expected new legal requirements and hygiene regulations for the hospitality and entertainment industry, venues will need to develop new operational solutions to position themselves optimally for a restart.
Patron Experience Mindset In The Age of COVID
The COVID-19 - Coronavirus pandemic - will have a lasting impact on the state of the patrons. They have lost loved ones, jobs, and businesses. Even when life has somewhat returned to normal, people all over the country will have a new hyper-awareness about getting sick from every day activities in the past they took for granted. Eating at a restaurant, coffee at a cafe, or sharing a pint with mates is a distant dream for many over east. Patrons are nostalgic for a time when we could simply live our lives normally, without the new strain COVID has caused on daily life.
“The Future Is Here But It’s Not Evenly Distributed”
Science fiction writer William Gibson once said “the future is here, but it’s not evenly distributed.” COVID-19 is the pressure that companies needed to start taking advantage of the technology available to make life less complicated, and there are many benefits of taking advantage of this technology.
We’ve seen the approval of telehealth by insurance companies and government regulators (insurers now reimburse for virtual doctor and therapy appointments - but did not for many years), better supply chain for deliveries of all kinds, much bigger corporate giving and donation programs, and allowing employees to work remotely in industries that prohibited it before.
The touchless, digital patron has been catered to in an unprecedented way. Pollution is way down. In cities all over the world residents can see mountain tops for the first time - emissions have decreased in such a significant way.
So what should venues do to help speed up recover?
There are four strategic areas to focus on: recovering revenue, rebuilding operations, rethinking the organization, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions.
In this article we will focus on the adoption of digital solutions so you can prepare to bring your venue into the digital age.
Over the past few months, there has been a transformation in the way we interact with loved ones, do our work, travel, get medical care, spend leisure time, and conduct many of the routine transactions of life. These changes have accelerated the migration to digital technologies at stunning scale and speed, across every sector.
“We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain,”
remarked one tech CEO. He is right. Adoption of bar and nightclub technologies will play a definitive role in the overall recovery of the sector.
During the early recovery period of partial reopening, venue owners will face some fundamental challenges. One is that patron behaviour and demand patterns have changed significantly and will continue to do so.
For example, patrons may feel comfortable going to bars before they will consider getting on a plane or going to sporting events. Early signals of increased consumer demand will likely come suddenly, and in clusters. Analysing these signals in real time and adapting quickly to bring patrons and services back into small to medium sized venues will be essential for companies to successfully navigate the recovery and build their brands across many different platforms.
To address these challenges, venues will need to set an ambitious digital agenda—and deliver it quickly, on the order of two to three months, as opposed to the previous norm of a year or more. There are three elements to this new focus:
Refocus digital efforts to reflect changing patron expectations. To adapt, venues need to quickly rethink customer journeys and accelerate the adoption of digital solutions. The emphasis will be different for each sub section of the industry. For many, this includes creating a seamless patron engagement experience, enabling them to complete everything they need to do online and before they leave their houses, from initial venue and event discovery and purchase to service and returning home.
Use data, Internet of Things, and AI to better manage operations. In parallel, companies need to incorporate new data and create new models to enable real-time decision making. In the same way that many risk and financial models had to be rebuilt after the 2008 financial crisis, the use of data and analytics will need to be recalibrated to reflect the post-COVID-19 reality in our industry.
This will involve rapidly validating business models, creating new data sets, and enhancing marketing strategies. Getting this right will enable venues to successfully navigate demand forecasting, asset management, and coping with massive new volumes of patrons. For example, apps and webapps that showcase an entire citys venues and events instead on having venues to rely on building their own individual applications that can be very costly if not done correctly and without relevant market testing.
Accelerate tech modernization. Companies will also need to greatly improve their IT productivity to lower their cost base and fund rapid, flexible digital-solution development. First, this requires quickly reducing IT costs and making them variable wherever possible to match demand.
This means figuring out what costs are flexible in the near-to-medium term, for example, by evaluating nonessential costs related to events or maintenance, and reallocating resources. Second, this involves defining a future IT-product platform, establishing the skills and roles needed to sustain it, mapping these skills onto the new organization model, and developing leaders who can train people to fill the new or adapted roles. Third, the adoption of cloud and automation technologies will need to be speeded up, including bringing cloud operations on-premise and decommissioning legacy infrastructure.
Increase the speed and productivity of digital solutions. To deal with the crisis and its aftermath, venues not only need to adopt digital solutions quickly but also adapting their establishments to new operating models and deliver these solutions to patrons and staff at scale.
Solving this “last mile” challenge requires integrating businesses processes, incorporating data-driven decision making, and implementing change management.
There are different ways to do this. A wide variety of companies, from banks to mining operations, have accelerated delivery by establishing an internal “digital factory” with cross-functional teams dedicated to matching business priorities to digital practices.
Larger venue groups, in addition to reinventing their core businesses, need to establish new business–building entities to capture new opportunities quickly.
If you need help adopting your business and brand to captialise on the new opportunities that will arise out of the post-COVID era contact the team at www.appollo.io and bring your venue into the modern age.
