Parkdean Resorts:
Reimagining customer experience
for a global leisure leader
Details
Expertise: user research, service design, co-design
My Role: Service Designer at Futurice
Client: Parkdean resorts
Dates: 2022-23
Project Summary
The UK’s largest holiday parks brand Parkdean Resorts underwent rapid growth following a series of M&A activity, resulting in a complex operating and tech environment. In a post-Covid setting, Parkdean saw an opportunity to “premiumize” its brand by re-inventing its customer experience.
As a Service Designer at Futurice I applied human-centred research and service design as part of a multidisciplinary team enabling Parkdean to harness digital technologies and upgrade legacy systems, transform its business around customer needs and create a more aspirational CX.
THE CHALLENGE
On the cusp of major growth, and at a turning point in the tourism industry, the management team at Parkdean Resorts knew it could reposition its brand through the prism of better CX. This vision included everything from better facilities to more efficient booking systems, upgraded menus and more: with tech at the center of everything.
The holiday park giant invited Futurice to help design a strategy that would leverage digital tech for the best possible CX – ensuring return visitors, even amid the competition of a newly reopened international tourism market. Our challenge was to help digitize key elements of the user journey, bringing tech skills in-house (rather than relying on third-party support), and updating and streamlining various legacy processes.
BRIEF AND APPROACH
Futurice was tasked with threading together various forms of legacy architecture with a new digitized interface, including a custom-built booking app. I planed and executed the qualitative user centred research and following service design work with our “learn by doing” approach. I played a key role in guiding Parkdean’s growing in-house digital team in ways of working, while ensuring their internal capacity and capability for delivery, as their internal digital team grew.
MY ROLE
Along with the team at Parkdean Resorts, I led Futurice's work in applying a human-centric approach to setting the vision, leveraging design research activities to understand visitors’ pain points with the parks’ booking systems, and co-creating an improved customer experience. Additionally, this inclusive process identified opportunities to make parks more accessible to a broader audience base.
IMPACT AND OUTCOMES
Digital capabilities are now in-house, with less reliance on external vendors.
Guests benefit from a transformed CX, including digital self-service.
Operations are more efficient and responsive, requiring less call center investment.
The new digital center of excellence has brought digital and business stakeholder teams out of their silos to work collaboratively in shaping new digital services.
LONG TERM IMPACT
This approach removed legacy systems as a barrier, brought digital and business stakeholder teams together to work more collaboratively (rather than in silos), and created a common platform for future teams to understand the processes used for further innovations and developments. Crucially, Parkdean gained in-house design and development expertise, which makes it a more powerful player in the crowded landscape of tourism.
The introduction of better CX has made a significant difference with Parkdean’s target audience, too. Visitors can now find and book the activities they want in a much more seamless way than was previously possible. The impact of this enhanced user interface is expected to have a dramatic ripple effect on not just customer satisfaction but revenue spent per holiday. With a more streamlined booking solution at their fingertips, customers can more easily plan and book their activities ahead of arriving at their chosen park retreat.
By enabling self-service, Parkdean Resorts enjoys operational benefits by anticipating customer demand, and reducing labor-intensive manual support services. Allowing customers to manage their bookings directly increases customer satisfaction and reduces call center demand. Over time, this transformed digital experience will inspire even greater growth, helping the veteran brand pull ahead in a digital-first age.