Visitor attractions with multiple locations often face the challenge of how to measure their performance in a way that is comparable across all locations, regardless of differences in business model, brand, segment, geography, size, price and more.

Built specifically for enterprise and government organizations with multiple locations and even disparate systems in each, Dexibit achieves this by structuring a common metrics model and making it quick and easy to create dashboards and reports with side by side views of locations, clusters or divisons.

Standardized Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should include:

1. Visitation Assuming a monthly reporting cadence to head office, this can be measured on a monthly, quarter to date and fiscal year to date basis, including performance to goal, plan and forecast. For comparables, focus on year on year growth (a favorite metric of ours given attractions experience significant seasonal fluctuations). A similar metric normalized for size and season is the visitation recovery rate from COVID if the comeback is still underway, measuring the percentage of visitors compared to a similar time period in 2017 – 2019. Locations may also want to report in more detail against ticket product, type or market segment (such as for cultural institutions – local, domestic and international visitor ratios).
2. Revenue Again, on a monthly, quarter to date and fiscal year to date basis, with track to goal, plan and forecast and the context of year on year growth rates. This can be broken down by line of business, including admission, merchandise and food and beverage, with non visit related revenues such as ecommerce, membership, advancement, venue hire and other lines separated.
3. Attendance Different to visitation, attendance covers special activities such as exhibitions, experiences and events (whether as part of the visit, or as a separate ticketed activity). For exhibitions and experiences, the attendance conversion rate against visitation is a useful metric to track in addition to actual attendance. Activities should be tracked both against the reporting cadence, plus based on the commencement of the activity to date for temporary activities (such as accumulative exhibition attendance). For event based attendance, it is important to consider other metrics around ticket sales for future events and reservation utilization. Locations may want to include a count or list of activities at this point, which may include education programs if these are a funding focus.
4. Membership In addition to total membership and period on period, year on year growth, loyalty can be compared by looking at member conversion rate against visitation, net new growth (new members less churned, as a percent of the base), the churn rate, the average visits per year of members and the context of the number of visits required for a member to achieve a return on their membership dues. Shared membership schemes between locations will need additional reporting on actual member visits for revenue settlement and to roll up into portfolio wide membership metrics.
5. Experience For visitor happiness, a standardized metric such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) is best, and can be compared period on period. For a simpler metric, social medial review ratings suffice. A list of top compliment and complaint topics will be useful to help guide group capital investment and marketing decisions.
6. Digital Core metrics for web and social can include website unique users, impressions and sessions plus social media impressions and engagement by channel. Both period on period and year on year growth rates are appropriate.
7. Unit economics To compare financial sustainability or profitability normalize for visitation by looking at visitor acquisition cost, average revenue per visit and net value per visit. For various lines of business relating to onsite visits, per caps can be broken down by admission, retail, food and beverage and auxiliary (such as parking or photography). Divisional management of commercial business lines may wish to go a step further into commercial space conversion rate from visitation, average transaction rate per store entrance and average order value to understand comparative store performance and bring in context. Unless spending is highly seasonal, period on period growth rates can be used for these. For membership, this can also include Life Time Value (LTV), however this can be a tricky metric for some locations to achieve and may include assumptions. For some locations, it may be appropriate to include a staff headcount number in the form of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) and if applicable, volunteers.
8. Open times Depending on the locations, it may be useful to note open days and hours, or any changes. It can be easy at head office to miss the opportunities of challenging opening time decisions if these are not reported on.
9. Almanac For context, it’s useful to understand any significant features, such as a public holiday or school term – especially if these differ between location geographies.
10. Notes and commentary Lastly, most locations will appreciate the opportunity to provide a narrative and report consumers at head office find these essential context to the data, particularly highlighting improvement areas or unique factors that may be affecting performance.

To achieve this view, portfolio wide data governance should include decisions to standardize where possible or at least achieve transparency on how comparable these metrics are. This will include decisions around what constitutes a ‘visit’ (e.g. footfall, ticketing, are no shows counted, are free visitors counted, are virtual attendees excluded etc), how revenue is recognized (e.g. how is membership revenue recognized over the subscription period), and how shared revenue is reported (e.g. before or after tax, as topline or the revenue share portion only). We recommend these rules are agreed in an operating procedure between the location and head office and documented as part of the data solution (in Dexibit, both freeform notes and data sources and transformations are recorded for clear lineage).