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The quality of tourist attractions is being judged increasingly not only by the variety and originality of the exhibits but also the quality of the services that support them, such as customer care, retail and catering service. Unfortunately, the provision of quality food service in many of the UK's major attractions is sometimes rudimentary and generally unimaginative, we offer catering consultancy in this area. At tourist attractions, visitors will primarily be concerned with leisure-necessity dining. They will need something to eat, but as eating may form an integral part of the leisure experience, they will also require good food and service, and pleasant surroundings at a reasonable price. Value for money is critical in leisure necessity dining and our catering consultancy is focused on this subject. Food service provision in tourist attractions has historically leaned more towards the 'necessity' dining market than 'leisure' dining. Improvements made in many major tourist attractions over the last few years have attempted to move towards the 'leisure' end of the scale. There are notable examples and exceptions of this. There are various motivations for providing a foodservice facility: Service to provide an additional service to visitors, such as in public sector sports facilities. Spin off to increase the time spent on more important income generating activity, such as in a shopping centre. Income to provide a commercial profit, such as in a theme park. Inherence because it is essential part of the offer, for example as part of a package holiday in a holiday park. There are often still large elements of 'service provision' motivation in publicly funded tourist attractions, and a degree of 'inherency' in the provision of food service at a theme park where visitors stay six hours on average. The trend in all cases however is towards catering service as an important generator of 'income' and profit. Although larger attractions are deriving substantial income from foodservice, amounting 20% of total income or more, smaller attractions often struggle to make significant profits whilst maintaining standards and value for money. Smaller attractions in particular must take a hard look at the costs and potential before committing valuable resources to activities that may yield little return. In looking at the opportunities all attractions should take a more holistic approach to income generation and be looking at external sources of business such as banquets and functions, corporate hospitality and commercial restaurant trade etc to supplement internally generated income from foodservice. Sykes Leisure Projects are able to provide catering consultancy to both operators and developers on food service provision within tourist attractions. The range of services includes concept development, product-market fit selection and viability analysis through to menu planning. |
Destination Tourism & Attraction & Feasibility Analysis Operational Advice Tourism & Leisure Cultural Strategies |
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