The Grand Parc du Puy du Fou welcomes more than 2 millions of visitors every year. The Vendée theme park, created by Philippe de Villiers in 1978, has been ranked as the best European theme park by its guest on Tripadvisor and is ranked second of the word. The park backs up its concept and unprecedented creations with a global digital strategy to help its visitors before, during and after their visit.
Let’s talk about it with Guillaume Marolleau, the Puy du Fou digital strategy director.
How does digital contribute to the visitor experience ?
“With our partners, we have imagined a complete digital ecosystem to make the families’ journey easier and more fluid : whether before their visit, during their stay or afterwards. It combines a website to find all of the park’s program combined with a ticket office to book their stay and accommodation, a mobile application to plan their day in the park, a blog to explain our approach and our commitments, information and entertainment pages on the various social networks, an online shop to extend their visit and, finally, a CRM to stay in touch with our customers. Each tool has its role. This digital strategy, already partially duplicated for the Toledo Park in Spain, will be applied in each of the countries where the Puy du Fou is present. Objective : to become an international brand.”
What services do you offer to families ?
“The website enables families to find out the Grand Parc offering, show, accommodations, catering, opening dates and programme, and tickets booking. They will find them in dematerialised form on the Park’s mobile applicaation, which they can download for free on their smartphone. This toolbox offers all sorts of practical services : an interactive map of the park to help them find their way around and GPS guidance from one attraction to another ; a personalised schedule of the shows chosen and simultaneous audio translation in five languages, real-time updates of the occupancy rate for shows and restaurants and a click and collect service…
Introduced in July 2020, this take-away meal service, tested in one of the 20 restaurants of the park, recorded 1,000 orders after one month with an average basket higher than consumption on site. Popular with families, particularly during this period of health crisis, click and collect will be extended next year to other restaurants in the park. Website and application were designed by Mazedia. They benefit from the same management interface allowing simultaneous programme updates on all our digital media.”
What do the visitors think about it ?
“Created in 2016 and redesigned for the 2020 season, the application has already been downloaded by 172,000 visitors this year. If we consider that the average family that frequents the Puy du Fou has 4 members, nearly 800,000 people have used it, almost 40 to 50% of the people on the Park. The application have a rating of 4.8 out of 5 on Tripadvisor on which we closely follow the opinions of visitors. They suggest improvements that we take into account. We are already working on new services that will be announced during the next season and will also be developing the online shop and strengthening the monitoring of the relationship with our guests.”