FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND
May 27, 2020

In achieving elimination of COVID-19, New Zealand moved to Alert Level 2 reopening, allowing public places such as visitor attractions to operate with constraints enabling improved hygiene, physical distancing and contact tracing. Flattening the curve and seeing just a single case of COVID-19 in the past week, its visitor attractions are showing their peers internationally what health and safety measures work and what reopening looks like. 

As the country reopened, Dexibit captured the visitor point of view at these venues alongside leadership interviews in a video series titled #ReopenRun, visiting the Auckland Museum, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland Library, SEA LIFE Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium, Sky Tower, Rainbows End theme park and the Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT). Chief Executive Angie Judge and Marketing Director Cecilia Paredes went to extreme lengths to capture the visitor perspective in its entirety – even leaping off Auckland’s 328m (1076 ft) Sky Tower and mustering courage for an 18 storey drop on the Fearfall at Rainbow’s End. Next up, the team will visit the city’s zoo, observatory, stadium, performing arts and other tourist attractions to continue discovering what works.  

“Working together is a huge strength for the visitor attractions sector in reopening to the public,” said Judge. “We’ve had thousands of leaders from cultural institutions and commercial venues joining us the past few months online for virtual events to collaborate for COVID-19 – it has been so refreshing to get out and visit some in person to share their experience first hand with others watching on from overseas.”

Advance passes, contact tracing, virtual queues, touch interactives and communicating expectations have all been important measures in visitor attractions. “The venues we’ve visited have done an incredible job in creating safe spaces and experiences for their visitors – they’ve brought exceptional responsibility, care and passion to their approach,” said Judge. “Compared to other public places, visitor attractions such as museums and theme parks are uniquely positioned to successfully implement physical distancing and contact tracing, given aspects such as ticketing and queues are a usual part of their operations. For the public, it’s a great time to enjoy these venues as they open to support a hard hit cultural and tourism sector – the animals at the zoo and aquarium are extra friendly having missed human interaction and theme park queues have never been shorter!” 

In addition to this series, Dexibit has released its latest software product free to visitor attractions. The Simulator tool uses machine learning to provide visitation projections for scenario planning. “The visitor attractions industry is facing an existential crisis,” said Judge. “We’re doing everything in our power to combat that in our mission to power our cultural future.”

ReopenRun footage can be republished by press outlets, attributing Dexibit and the host venue.

Ends.

About Dexibit:

Dexibit is the global market leader of big data analytics and artificial intelligence for visitor attractions. Dexibit’s software as a service includes forecasts, insights, dashboards and reports.

Press contact:

Contact press@dexibit.com, phone +(64) 21 186 9321 or visit press.dexibit.com. For Dexibit’s COVID-19 coverage, see covid.dexibit.com.