Today on Skip The Queue, Andy Povey is joined by Ray Hole, an architect with decades of experience shaping visitor destinations worldwide. Ray has been at the forefront of master planning, iconic projects and long-term tourism strategy, and he’s not afraid to challenge how our sector thinks about growth. They're going to explore what really makes a project iconic, whether we’re designing for the wrong future, how weather can become a strategic asset rather than a risk, and what visitor attractions might look like in 2040.
In this episode of Skip the Queue, Andy Povey is joined by Ray Hole of Ray Hole Architects for a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation about strategy, storytelling and the true economics of experience design.
Show References:
Ray Hole, Managing Director of Ray Hole Architects
Skip the Queue is brought to you by Merac. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your host is Andy Povey.
Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Andy Povey: Hello and welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast that tells the stories of the world's best visitor attractions and the amazing people who work in them. Brought to you by Merrick. For our listeners at home who haven't come across Ray Hole architects before or haven't met you at many different events that we all attend, I wonder if you'd just give you a quick intro about you and what you do.
Ray Hole: I mean, the name on the tin says Rayho Architects, but I think that's as always, a little bit misleading. Yes, I'm known for obviously the built environment and projects where architecture is involved, but we always think ourselves more as a strategist and if then architecture is required, then we either perform that role or we advise of how to actually, you know, create those. But we're strategists in the business side of master planning. That's not the business modelling, but the business side of master planning. And of course, the term experience economy or economics comes into that. You know, we, we create, I suppose, experiences through architecture built through the built environment, landscape and infrastructure.
Andy Povey: So you're the guys who are going to tell the sovereign wealth fund or Andy's big pension fund how we need to build the park or the museum or the gallery.
Ray Hole: Well, certainly an important input. I mean, I'm a great believer in collaboration. I mean, my earlier career was in central government where there wasn't such a thing as a lead architect or a lead engineer. And by the way, I started my career as a structural civil engineer and then I switched disciplines. So I'm a great believer in having different inputs and that collaboration. In fact, people that know me, they will hear me use this term Camelot, as opposed to a pyramid model or a linear structure. I like Camelot, where every input is equally valid. And that, I always think, creates some of the best projects because all of the inputs are really valuable. So, yeah, I always find I get a bit sort of nervous when there's too much volume from any one quarter on a project.
Ray Hole: That domination of something can lead it down a certain route which may not be as balanced as one could imagine.
Andy Povey: I love that idea. So we're knights of the round table rather than the pyramid or the hierarchy.
Ray Hole: And even further, I mean, if you remember, you know, King Arthur was in the roundtable, so even the client, you know, so you don't have separation between the client team and the professional team or advisors. You know, you have everybody around you input it, from the investors to the operators, you know, to the design teams, you know, I mean, I remember once, and I've never achieved this, by the way. Yeah. At the end of a project, you know, you get the credit list.
Andy Povey: Yeah. You're talking about film credits.
Ray Hole: Yeah, yeah. Or even a project credit, you know who.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: I always find it's interesting because that's at the end of the project. If you reverse that. Yeah. And started with all those that are going to be involved, and you end up with a fantastic product. Yeah. It doesn't work like that, you know.
Andy Povey: No, no, it doesn't. But I can completely see where you're coming from. I like that idea a lot. I mean, it resonates so closely with how I feel about this person. For years I never got past the entrance of any attraction because I was stuck at the ticket sales point.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And then of course, that, you know, that Rubicon. Sometimes I've become a bit obsessive. Yeah. I mean, again, people that work with us, I always start by saying, you know, and this is a standard way of designing how design is taught across all the disciplines. The idea of a sense of arrival. Okay, you've heard that many times. Sense of arrival, we work it backwards. I start with the sense of departure. In the human psychology of any kind of experience, you have these two bookends, the primacy effect and the recency effect. Now, primacy is your first impression. It's a revival. It's your hello, it's your handshake. It's that sort of thing.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: But actually, the most important, the more powerful human emotion is actually the. The sense of the recency effect, where it. Because it actually creates the memory, it reinforces the memory. Hence why car parking when you leave is really important, because a near miss or a bump that completely wipes out every feeling you have across the whole day. So the leaving experience is really important. But you're absolutely right, obviously, the sense of arrival. You end up being at the pay perimeter.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: And that's really crucial. But you never see that on the way out. And it's quite interesting. I've always wondered. It'd be quite good to have a donation box if you have a good day now. Pay. Yeah. What's the pay? Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's a TV program that does that. How much? You know, I think it's the hotel. How much would you pay for your stay at the hotel?
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: Just imagine if we were doing that. So it wasn't a ticket barrier. It. It was a pay as you leave, like, how much do you think that was worth? You know, that would be an interesting experiment.
Andy Povey: It would. I'm sure there are many operators take you up on testing that one out. I love the story. I keep using the analogy of why IKEA sell hot dogs, and it's for exactly that reason. It's at the end of the experience. They don't want you to be paying because nobody likes paying, so they want your last experience to be that. So quite unhealthy. Salty, fatty, hot dog loveliness.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And also there's a sense of anticipation or expectation. You know, the ticket price there says, yeah, this is the value that we hope to exceed. You know? You know, and the. And the economics of that, you know, I mean. I mean, a bit of an evangelist on the experience economy. And the latest release opened up a week or so ago, which is the Transformation Experience. That's Joe Pine's successor, if you like. You know, and that's wonderful. That's a different look at it. But certainly the experience economy is still incredibly valuable. But it's two words. It's economic and it's experiential. You know, and sometimes the economy part is actually not really balanced with the experience. But fundamentally, you're paying for the experience.
Andy Povey: Of course.
Ray Hole: But when you pay up front, you don't know what that's going to be.
Andy Povey: Well, no. Unless we are seeing a huge trend towards people repeating visits, and it's all down to this sort of desire for the customer or the guest to guarantee they're going to have a good day. So they're becoming less experimental, more about, I don't mind spending the money, but I want to go somewhere where I know I'm going to get a great experience.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And of course, predictability is interesting because one of the strongest emotions is serendipity. Goodness me, I didn't expect to have that experience. Goodness me, that's valuable. Yeah. So again, it's paradoxical, as were discussing, and you go, how do you create serendipity at the same time as saying, expect this, you know, and then delivering it. So it's a fascinating prescription, you know, when we're asked to design things, you know, like, can you create this? And. But again, that's where all the inputs are really valuable. Not just anyone in particular. No.
Andy Povey: Very interesting. So you mentioned the experience economy. I'm a big fan of Joe Pine and all of his work. I think it's fantastic. It's unusual for what I would. The box that you would sit in simply because of the name of the company at Architect. How is that change in the move to much more experiential economy change what you guys are doing?
Ray Hole: Yeah, well, when I met Joe Pyne, and I remember very well, it was on the book launch, would you believe in Animal Kingdom at iarpa, you know, and I really met him by accident and I didn't realize that one of the projects were working on, which is Autostat, was very, you know, fundamental to his research. And so we, we chatted after the launch and it completely. A lot of people talk about epiphany moments, but I have to tell you, that was an epiphany moment because it completely rewrote my classical training, you know, in the construction industry, in particular in architecture. Because at that time, and you'll remember this very well, everybody wanted to design an icon. You know, you design me an icon. Oh, that's iconic. Yeah. So this word.
Ray Hole: And you can't design an icon to receive the accolade of being an icon. It's a product of societal love sustained over a long period.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: You can't design that. And I love the fact that very often, you know, the thing that's an icon was never meant to be an icon, you know, and that leads to complications, you know, because sometimes they get listed because they're so iconic and then you can't touch them. And so it becomes an economic burden in that sense. But the word icon has been swapped now or translated into experience. However, very often the word experience is generic. In other words, you can have a thousand and one experiences, but which one is the correct one? And it must not be generic, it must be, well diagnosed. If you're looking at an existing attraction or product, you say, okay, what's the diagnosis of the experience? Is it achieving what you think? Yeah, it should be. Is there deficits or.
Ray Hole: The more difficult one is prescribing because it doesn't exist. You can always spot errors, but it's really hard to prescribe successes.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Ray Hole: But when I first, I still got the original edition, which I think is one of the best of the Experience economy book. We had to translate or adapt some of the philosophies and metrics and diagrams to suit an architectural experiential product.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Ray Hole: Yeah, yeah. And so we use those now as our diagnostic process and also our prescriptive and the experience realms, which goes right away back to first edition is really fascinating because the standard world of architects is very much in the aesthetic. It's not in the learning and discovery entertainment, which is sort of quite interesting and misunderstood because it sits in the passive absorptive range, not in the immersive. I mean, fundamental entertainment is where you sit there, you receive it and you don't add anything to it at all, you know.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, you're in the cinema.
Ray Hole: So there's an intellectual side, the two experiential prescribing, but it's not really carried out. But we use all the standard traditional briefing models that architects use. Okay. Because, you know, that's really important. But we add on this extra part, which is experience economic briefing, including bringing on psychologists, you know, economic and child psychologists, you know, because we don't have those skills. We have understandings, but we don't have those skills. And it comes back to Camelot again, you know, the project team is much bigger than one imagines from just creating a built environment, landscape or infrastructure. A lot of these things we're going to be talking about all crossover and blur in.
Andy Povey: I'm going to say what you're describing, the way you're working resonates so closely to my own personal experience. But the label architects, I'd change that.
Ray Hole: You know what? Yeah. I mean, I try not to call myself it. Yeah. And again, whenever I talk to somebody after about an hour, because conversations do last long with me, they say, you haven't mentioned a building once. I say, well, why does that predication of a conversation? Because fundamentally the outcome of a conversation could be, well, you don't need a building.
Andy Povey: No, no.
Ray Hole: Now that's a really valuable possibility. But if the premise is, okay, we need an architect. Cause we need a building, or worse, actually, we want a building. I give a keynote talk on need and want. Okay.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: Two different things. You may not need a building, you know, because buildings are very expensive.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And they're getting more and more expensive and for good reason. Because if you really need a building, then it has to perform brilliantly. Yeah. You know, I mean, I remember the days early in my career I used to get a phone call and say, ray, can you just knock us up with a cheap black box, please? That was my brief, okay? Now you can't do that. You can't do that. And for good reason. However, then the decision, you know, that says, okay, we do need a built environment that needs to be very well considered. And the inputs into that decision isn't simply from our quarter.
Ray Hole: It has to come in from operation investment, you know, health and safety, you know, even politically, you Know everything we do requires a permission, you know and it's interesting so sites societal activism now, you know and you see that happen in. We don't want this built here. You know. We have a vote by the way. Yeah. A2, you know, over tourism and squirting people in restaurants in the Ramblas. Yeah, yeah. So it's quite interesting where we've got to now and it isn't just a very simple like we need a building. Can you design us one? Build it please. Yeah. So I quite like the fact that we have these checks and balances, you know. But you do need then the Camelot of inputs to get that bre experience.
Andy Povey: Yeah, love it. So moving on to your personal experience. What do you feel when you go to an attraction now? Do you get to have a day out?
Ray Hole: Yeah, it depends why I'm visiting. If I'm in a sort of diagnostic mode then I do try and take on the guise of the range of visitors. I used to use my children as my research model. Yeah. I mean they're grown up now but they were really valuable, you know, when my kids were sort of 11 and six brilliant observers, you know and you observe them. The thing about taking your children to an attraction, you generally don't experience it because you're always looking down making sure you don't lose your children. Okay.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: When you haven't got your children, you're looking up and that's something which we don't really do. Humans don't look up. It's quite interesting. We, you know, we're generally looking downwards, you know, for trip hazards or things, you know. That's why the ground plane, I love using the ground plane. The floor, it's really underutilised. You know, we tend to think of walls.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: We don't really think of ceilings and roofs. So. So with some of these immersive now technologies we're using every surface, you know, maybe for the first time where you know, your neck is a gimbal, you know, where you're absolutely, you know, active, you know, in the experience. And those experiences of course come through your senses. 5 and as we mentioned before, you know, we are dominated by AV crusade now where you know, I have to have the five senses activated. You know, smell and taste are quite interesting. They're not really used as much as one could be. Touch is interesting now. So Zane zoos that's being denied us now because of. Yeah. So how do we somehow compensate for that lack of one of our most basic senses and that's really fascinating. But. But smells and tastes are. Yeah.
Ray Hole: And of course, we're just beginning to explore what's known as the 26 Uncommon Senses, which is a fascinating area. Yeah, no, it's really interesting things like love and empathy, you know, and I was. If you. So if you wrote into your strategic brief, okay, we need to create empathy, you know, between the visitor and the place or even the staff, you know, it's very interesting. So obviously we're talking about tickets earlier. So that transaction there is really complicated. You know, you're asking swap money for the expectation or possibility of a wonderful value. Okay. If you don't have empathy with that. Yeah. Where you say, of course I trust this moment. So empathy at the ticket gate I find really interesting. It's a really tricky moment.
Ray Hole: Hence why, I mean, we try now to segregate the payer from the rest of the group, you know.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: So give example at Chester, you know, it's quite an old model now, but it was the first to try this, I believe, where in the past you denied any kind of experience, you know, until you paid.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: You can go to Chester and enjoy the elephants for nothing. You can get. You get a coffee, you can go in the shop, you don't have to go in. But of course the transaction has already happened because you've driven there, you've parked, so you're not going to lose that. Yeah. However, bring that experience forward. And so that empathetic moment of the transaction, money, economics, into experience has happened already. And that is something which isn't used as much as it should do, but that these are just tools one uses when you're designing the gate.
Andy Povey: Couldn't agree more, Ray. A couple of years ago I took the family to Plopsa de Pan in Eastern Kirk. It was about 30 minutes from Dunkirk and you can see the wooden coaster from the car park. You park within 20 yards of it. So the noise, the sound of the. Even the smell of the motors and the screams and the people on it, your experience has started. My kids were bouncing off the walls of the car before we got out. The experience has already started.
Ray Hole: Yeah. No, yeah. And again, it's quite interesting. So that was about the arrival. Again, coming back to the original point. If you reverse that, what could that be? You see? And just analysing that and inputting that into the design. I remember talking to John Holland when he took over and Disney Parks. And of course, when we leave, you don't know what operation is happening. But fundamentally they're cleaning the park Cleaning off, making sure everything's tidy, ready for the next days experience. But the cost of those staff has already started because they're waiting for the guests to leave. So what John advocated was, okay, all of the operational staff are about to clean, come out and they line the exit with the mickey jazz hands and they wave goodbye. And so you're getting value out of operations necessity.
Ray Hole: But actually, but it's not like in a dead hour, you know, whatever. Yeah, so it's quite interesting how, okay, what assets do we have at our disposal, human and any other, to create, you know, the experiences and of course then the value goes up.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: So how do you get value out of the 15 to 30 minute departure? It's very rarely spoken about, you know, it's like, okay, time to go, out you go, you know. Yeah, you've been evicted, effectively, you know,
Andy Povey: Last orders, isn't it? Get out, go to look at that.
Ray Hole: Last orders. It's quite interesting. But again, these are just tools that you put into the strategic brief to be answered. And of course if they're not in the brief, there's no chance of them being answered, you know, and so, yeah, they're all in our, you know, and many more as well, you know, have we answered? Have we answered? Have we answered? Have we answered? You know, but there you go.
Andy Povey: No, I, I took my kids to Madame Tussauds for the weekend and I worked at Madame Tussauds. I was a duty manager there for about a year. That was many years ago, before everyone had a mobile phone or a computer and camera in their pocket. Being there as a guest on Sunday, I was astounded and I shouldn't be really that the majority of people who were experiencing Madame Tussauds were doing it through their phone.
Ray Hole: Yes.
Andy Povey: Because it's just about taking a photograph. Go and stand next to that image, that portrait, that sculpture and get your photograph taken.
Ray Hole: So yeah, that's not interesting enough. That's not a phenomena. Again, thinking how we used to do things. We used to create vantage points. Yeah, yeah. And so you looked at. Now if you had a camera, you would take it. But the thing about old cameras there, you didn't know until you got the.
Andy Povey: No, no, no. Around the screen.
Ray Hole: But now of course all the vantage points you take and it says memory creation and postcards are a bit like that, you know, wish you were here. Yeah. Now it's. I am here, you know, it's my own memory. But I can Export that. Yeah. And there are many attractions now that are simply Instagrammable experiences.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: You know, so give an example. If you go to Tully's, to the tulip experience, Stuart and Sam, you know, set up these incredible backdrops and props, you know, where it's all about Instagramming, you know, and what that requires, of course, is a perfect tulip environment with these props. Because, you know, so the notion of, oh, is Tully's tulips or pick your own bit like the pumpkins. No, it's not. You know, it's actually, I want to get a wonderful, you know, evocative picture of oneself. And so that means that in the old days, we used to call it the event horizon. So nothing breaks, you know, so you see the outside world, you know, that's absolutely extraordinary, you know, important now, you know, so that you're creating these vantage points for Instagrammability where nothing interrupts that evocative moment.
Ray Hole: And so that takes a lot of effort because, you know, everything has an edge. You know, you have to then sort of make sure you're designing for. Yeah. So Instagrammability is a really big thing. And it's generational as well, you know, Very much so. I mean, that's one thing we're realizing now that all of the platforms do have demographics associated with them, you know, and. And if you. And if you don't get that right, you could be, well, marketing or, you know, talking to nobody. Yeah. Or the wrong. You know, and you wonder why. Well, you know, I spent a fortune on social media. Why isn't anybody coming or spending or whatever? So. Well, you know, it's the wrong language.
Andy Povey: Yeah. Money's all gone on LinkedIn and no one's there. Your audience aren't there.
Ray Hole: Yeah, no, indeed. Yeah. And, yeah, so that's really, again, nothing to do again. You know, I'm an architect. What's that got to do me? I just want to make sure that the WI fi infrastructure, and very often that's not happening, you know, that can really spoil your day if you can't connect.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: To shout loud like, I'm here. This is fantastic, you know, and of course, you also lose the viral marketing, you know, side, you know, because your. Your, you know, your advocates are really powerful.
Ray Hole: It's really difficult, isn't it? Because a lot of the. What we do in the attractions world is face to face. It's all physical where it's very analogue environment. People come to an attraction because they want a real life experience.
Andy Povey: There's a big divider. There's a bunch of attractions. I know where they don't promote WI Fi, they don't want you on your phone, versus those two sorts where you have to be on your phone all the time just to get into.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And the point is those. Those are strategic, brief decisions.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: It's not by chance. Okay. You know, and I mean, some places, you know, I mean, theaters, for instance. Interesting now, but you leave your phone so you can't capture, you know, anything. But also, you can't interrupt the performance. You know, it is a memory, you know, in your mind, you know, and. And. And that's really powerful. So you have to then say, oh, you. You know, you don't believe. I mean, give an example. We. We obsessed with Derren Brown. Okay. As a family.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Ray Hole: It's the one. It's the one performer where the whole family just go, yeah. There's no dissent. Diaries are altered. Yeah. Things are canceled. Okay. We're seeing Derren Brown. But it is about your memory of it. And you go, it's mind blowing. You're not capturing it by a third medium. You know, it's yours. But there's other attractions where you have to have the capture. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, it's very disappointing, you know. So again, everything about design does come down to the strategic brief. What are you trying to achieve? And then the mediums and methods and whatever has to deliver that. Always remember talking about technology, Bob Simpson, you know, the founder of Electrosonic, he told me so much. But it comes from this sort of Genesis quotation which you always use was, okay, yes, we got all the technology that you can use.
Ray Hole: Yep, yep. But what are you trying to say? What's your story? Then we'll apply the technology. Yeah. And that is a truism which, again, sometimes we forget, you know, because you can just throw technology and things say, do you like it? Do you like it? Do you like it? You go, oh, not quite sure whether.
Andy Povey: What's it trying to do?
Ray Hole: Yeah.
Andy Povey: But the storytelling is. It's a thread that I hadn't intended to run through this season of podcast, but it absolutely is. Understanding your story isn't telling it.
Ray Hole: Yeah. And I mean, I always. I always say everything is telling a story. There's not a vacuum if you don't think about the story. In, you know, good example, the bin store, if you don't design that carefully, you're telling a story.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: Okay. And so. And of course, every medium. Yeah. The storytelling does not rest in the Hands of any one particular medium. When one of the most powerful story mediums that architecture gives is cultural, that's the reason why we revere, you know, ancientness. You know, we visit places like, you know, ancient Greece or Egypt or even ancient Rome or even a Gothic church, and we go, okay, all you have is the architecture, you know, but the stories embodied in that are quite extraordinary. Now, of course, our job is, you know, and others is to draw those stories out even further. You know, so you engage more and becomes relevant, you know, because some of them are silent or misunderstood or wherever. Yeah. So it's very. It's quite interesting how architecture. Yeah. And I always say the difference between a building and architecture. Yeah.
Ray Hole: Is a building fundamentally at a simplistic level is built environment, landscape and infrastructure. And is functional.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: To become architecture, you have to have a story or a compelling reason why it's there. Then it becomes architecture. Now, thing is, you spend the same money. Yeah. Interest could actually spend less money by getting architecture under that definition than a functional building because, you know, sometimes our greatest products or creations of humankind don't work very well. Yeah. Okay. So you can swap or compensate a lack of function for the love of something.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: You know, and. And this notion of love, which is feeling as opposed to functional, you know, again, that's a separator. Yeah. So. So you use feeling very early on in this interview. And it's absolutely true. You know, we, you know, we don't see things, we don't hear things, we feel things for our senses. And then those 26 other ones, you know, which even some of those I don't quite get, and how to embody them into our work. I mean, I mean, empathy we are trying to use. So again, empathy is interesting. It's about that trust. And just talking to some experts, I think these PhD students or professors, they were. They were trying to discuss what's the most empathetic job. And they got down to a hostage negotiator. Yeah. Somebody out of a hostage situation. It takes trust.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: And anyway, cut. Long story short that they were saying, well, why. Why are they really good at this? And. And they got it down to. And again, this. I don't know whether it is real science or not, but the. If they. If you can synchronise your heartbeat with another human, empathy suddenly occurs because you are one.
Andy Povey: Wow.
Ray Hole: Yeah. So. So now what's interesting in modern buildings is we have all the M and E, you know, the ventilation and all.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: And you use hotels as much as I do. You know, you walk in and you go, one, one, 1, 1. That should be synchronised to our heartbeat. Yeah. And guess what? You'll fall asleep because it doesn't exist. Because we have a noise inside our body, which is our heart, which we're. Which comes from. Actually from the womb. You know, when we're. Before we're born. You know, your mother's body is, you know, it's all acoustics and stuff like that. So. Yeah. So anyway, so we're experimenting on some of those things and. Which is very interesting.
Andy Povey: Right. This is. We're going so broad.
Ray Hole: This is a talk about buildings.
Andy Povey: It's almost turning into a religious experience, which I'm really enjoying.
Ray Hole: Oh, goodness me. I mean, if you get to that point, I mean, I would say you have a success on your hands.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Ray Hole: You know, that can last thousands of years. Of course, you know, so bringing this.
Andy Povey: Back a little bit to. To the audience. So if I'm an attraction operator, we're talking a lot about things to consider right at the start. But obviously the majority of our audience have already got their retraction. They've already got their facility. What would be your piece of advice to them to bring in to the next round of thought processes?
Ray Hole: Yeah, operators are around this, are on the round table. Very important. And you do ignore them at your peril. You know, I mean, if you actually ask the question of any design team, have you ever operated anything? You know. Yeah. And even the ones that have sort of been involved in some sort of way. Yeah. They're not operators, otherwise they will be operators. Okay.
Andy Povey: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: So they are highly informed and they come with the successes and the scars. Okay. And so for, you know, you have to listen. But fundamentally, the operational side almost shouldn't be experienced, if that makes sense. You know, the behind the scenes. Yeah. Has to be so. So hidden, so disguised. Yeah. That actually go well. Goodness me, how do they run this place? You know, it's extraordinary because, you know, now the only time there's an exception to that is when you wish to embody the operation into the experience. And the one I always use. Yeah. Is so you have the Disney parade for Wild Idcock to sell the tickets. There's the awareness in the advertising. Yeah. But of course they ride horses. Yeah. And horses have a habit of living.
Andy Povey: A mess on the road.
Ray Hole: Just where you're going to walk and follow anyway. So guess who turns up at the end of the back end of the show? Literally, it's the entertaining person that cleans up the pooh. Yeah. Of course, the kids love. And of course, if you've, you know, it could be Charlie Chaplin, it could be, you know, somebody else from the cast, whatever. But cool. You know, the singing dancing janitor. Yeah. The road sweeper is now synonymous with over operational requirement. Yeah. But it isn't. It isn't a function. Yeah. It's actually experiential. And so. So again, I try and, you know, when I can input, you know, say, okay, no, that's very functional. Yeah. Okay, let's swap what you got to do now into value. Yeah. And the economic value is experience. Yeah. And, you know, like, you know, like livery, you know, when.
Ray Hole: When, you know, when you say, okay, you can turn up in any clothes because I'm a. I'm a tradesman. Okay. No, now. Now you are in uniform.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: And you are on stage, you know, going right way back to the very first line in Joe Pine's book, you know, the world's a stage, you know, and so, you know, even to a point where we used to separate, you know, like, there's. There's the car park for the staff. That's the game through the back door. Because you don't want the staff mixing, where if you've got really brilliantly inducted staff. Yeah. They can actually be a wonderful part of, you know, the visitor experience, you know, mingling. And the best example of that course was the 2012 Olympics, where the original security team was group four, I believe, anyway, for whatever reason, they weren't doing that. But they brought in then the armed services.
Ray Hole: And what was lovely about that, it followed, actually the Wimbledon model where you have the armed services in the crowd, but they're stewards. So what you have. So when you got the train up to the Olympics, they were on the train with you, which made you feel incredibly safe. And then they were everywhere helping you know, because they're trusted. Come back to empathy. They're trusted members of society, you know, and you go, wow, isn't that interesting? So armed services, yeah, Suddenly become stewards at big attractions. And so it's not a security man with, you know, high vis. Jacket. With security we send could make you feel unsafe. They go, oh, goodness me, a lot of security here. There must be a problem. As opposed to. No, these are wonderful young people, you know, in our society. And then suddenly that empathy changes.
Ray Hole: And so it's quite. Quite interesting operationally that, you know, that you incorporate that and, you know, and the story where, you know, operators know where things are sort of going to go wrong even before they happen. And they're not there to deny the creator creatives, they're there to just guide. It's simply one input again around the.
Andy Povey: Capital table, around the table, back to the round table. Now, your story then's just reminded. It's not reminded. It resonates really well with experiences I've had going to gigs and concerts recently where you're going through the metal detector and that just starts that whole concept of, how dangerous is this place? I took my girls to a football match on Saturday. It was only. It was a Brentford versus Salty women's teams. There's only 4,000 people there. But again, through the metal detectors. Can we check your bags?
Ray Hole: Yeah. It can be a bump in the road.
Andy Povey: Yeah, it just sets that. Sets that expectation that there's.
Ray Hole: Yeah, I mean, I always thought, you know, I mean, do you remember the film Total Recall? Yeah, I do, yeah. Where the X ray machine was literally that, you know, I always thought that, you know, why can't you just put a, you know, in the ticketing line you say, okay, can we just check? You hold your hands up. Yeah, it's not really your X ray. Yeah. But you go, oh, look it up. Oh, yeah. You know, you could turn it into a thing of entertainment where, you know, funny objects are actually on your body, but they're not really. They go, oh, can we just. It would. It would just take away that sense of concern and anxiety.
Andy Povey: I love that idea. Ray, I think you come up with a concept in this conversation of just.
Ray Hole: Making everything but everything do you know? I mean, this is where the imagineering, which is obviously, you know, the Disney World, but it's absolutely true, you know. So again, you take the strategic brief, you say, right, we've got to have that. Understand that right? Now, how do we convert that effect? Capex. Yeah, how do we convert capex into revgenning opportunity?
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: And through. And then obviously the OPS optimisation, the OPS cost optimisation, then say, okay, because very often it's like, well, we have to do that. We're going to have to man it. And things like. Yes, but you fit that into then the economics of the experience that you're given. But that's the way I always think about it. So when there's something which is pure capex, it's all function and lacking experience. My ultimate would be where there is not one single penny spent on the budget in the terms of the built environment, landscape and infrastructure is converted into experience. Every single penny. And then we don't get into that conversation about how much is the architect costing? The, you know, is it 60, 40 or 90?
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: You know, it's. I think it's a false sort of argument where you go, no, let's. Let's all work together and then convert everything into experience, mate.
Andy Povey: This is the best experience we possibly can.
Ray Hole: 100, you know, so every penny spent. Yeah. Delivers an experience. Yeah. Which then give you economic return.
Andy Povey: One of my favourite analogies, phrases I use when talking to my team is the think like the person cleaning the changing rooms at Man United. I went asked, what's your job? The response is, well, I'm here to win the cup, but I win the cup by cleaning and changing rooms. I love that.
Ray Hole: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a very. I forget where I heard this now, but it's always the cleaner. It comes up in anecdote. It's always the cleaner for some reason. That's a shame, really. But anyway, the cleaner was asked, oh, what's, what's your sort of job here? Yeah. And he said, to land a man on the moon.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: And you go, wow, that's induction. Actually, do you know where I think I did hear that? It was at the Joe Pine Book launch recently. Yeah.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Ray Hole: And it's about how. Because the new transformation economy is all about flourishing, which I love.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: Disney performance. Yes, absolutely. But flourishing. And that brings in society and communities and, you know, to flourish, you know, is very different about just hard nosed business performance. So I love that. Yeah. But I think that's where it was. So the flourishing of the NASA, you know, to land the man on the moon from instruction in what, 61 to 69, landing it. I mean, you try and do a project like that in what, eight years? Goodness me. You know. You know, hence why my dad used to always say, when I used to say, oh, dad, that's really hard. He chastised me. Yeah. Honestly, chastise me. Hard.
Andy Povey: Hard.
Ray Hole: Yeah. We've landed a man on the moon. Yeah. And they go, oh, yeah. It's quite funny because I was born a month after Kennedy, gave the Rice University speech about we're going to land on the moon. Not because it's easy, because it's hard. Yeah. And it just resonated in my. I mean, still does. I'm telling you the story.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: Anyway, so I met Buzz Aldrin at conference. It was at the Islington Building Centre. Anyway, so I queued up for literally an hour and it was A book you were signing promoting space tourism. Okay. Anyways, I got to see Buzz Al. I got to see Buzz Aldrin, and now I'm not. I'm not a young person here. I'm 43. Okay, okay. I'm not young. I didn't have a book. I just queued up. When I got to him, he's looking for the book to sign. Then he said, oh, what can I do for you? I said, I simply want to ask you a question. You did go, didn't you? And he said to me, I sure did, son. Yeah. I said, thank goodness for that. Yeah. And I walked off. I thought, so my whole life, my whole being could be destroyed. Yeah.
Ray Hole: By him saying, well, it's debatable, or something like that. I go, no, yeah.
Andy Povey: No, it was a quarry in Wales. Yeah.
Ray Hole: What's the point now where. If it isn't hard, I don't think it's worthwhile, you know?
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: And I think that's interesting for consultants, you know. You know, work hard, work really hard for the common aim, which is the project, you know, and then, so, yeah, goose up into Snowden. It took nine years. Nine years.
Andy Povey: This is the visitor centre you put.
Ray Hole: On top of Snowden, on the top of the mountain.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: Nine years that. That took from, you know, first pencil touching paper and thinking to opening. And you say, wow, that's a. That's a long period, but it is the same. Same time frame as landing a man on the moon. So.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. Possibly similar challenges. Who knows?
Ray Hole: A lot of challenges. A lot of challenges. Yeah. It really tested everybody, that project, and. And it's. It's a real achievement, you know, and it's. It transformed the whole of that north. Well, yeah, yeah. You know, so again, it's not a. Everybody thinks it's a building, you know, but it's not. It was a strategy, you know, because you have to go past all these other places and leave past these old places to get to the. The pinnacle and so.
Andy Povey: Absolutely, yeah. It's like going down to the south bank in London and you try to imagine what that was like before the London Eye.
Ray Hole: Yeah.
Andy Povey: It was a wasteland for anybody who's younger than Ray or I listening to this.
Ray Hole: Yeah.
Andy Povey: And now that you've got the London Eye as a. Can we call it an icon yet?
Ray Hole: It's loved, you know, it has sustained time. You know, it went through its temporary planning, so it wasn't removed, you know, and so. And it is a poster personality in the city, you know, so yeah. You could argue that's moving into that territory. There's your litmus test.
Andy Povey: You know, different question. Right. Different topic. We're seeing a lot of attractions moving into accommodation. I heard from the guys at Creeley next to last week they were even putting people in tents in February half term. There was so much demand for people to go and stay. What's good accommodation look like and what's bad accommodation look like in their attractions world?
Ray Hole: Well, again, strategically, everybody should be moving towards some kind of accommodation. There's a right time to do it. Of course. I mean, you can't just be accommodation and hope people are going to come to it and spend the time. So you've got to develop it. But fundamentally, once you get to a point where you say, right, okay, how do I now attract more people? That is in and out of season, how can I get them to dwell more? Yeah. So I use the phrase the fun factory. Yeah. So if you were running a factory, okay. You wouldn't be doing one shift because you go bankrupt. You'd have a morning shift, an afternoon shift and you work through the evening. Okay. Yeah. So eight hours. Eight hours. Eight hours. And then that's a factory. So we have factories of fun or experience. Okay.
Ray Hole: So now very often we do a nine to five. Yeah.
Andy Povey: And that's it. Yeah.
Ray Hole: And the rest of it is all your costs and overheads and like that. Yeah. And you go, well, the factory isn't going to survive. Okay.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: Accommodation is your overnight shift. Yeah. Now the thing about accommodation is that it's more than your day ticket. So you don't have to have the same numbers.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Ray Hole: But the mistake that a lot of people have sort of made in the past is they, they sort of take pictures of the accommodation, say, come to this yurt, come to this shepherd's hut, come to this. Yeah. When in fact, that's not the, the magnet. It's what you're experiencing. And very often it's what you look at through the tent flaps. Yeah. So, so when were doing part of the accommodation strategy down at Port Lynn, which is probably the best example, you know, the metrics on that are quite extraordinary. I mean, you're talking thousands of pounds per night to stay there. Okay. And they have everything from two man tents to eight person tents for families. We designed the tree houses. You've got the sleeping with lions and tigers, sleeping with dogs. I mean, effectively you've grown.
Ray Hole: Now that accommodation business model is greater than the day ticket and less Volatile because you've bought your ticket so you have to come.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: So, so it's quite interesting. So, so, yeah. Accommodation. The other thing that's important is that we always used to have the 28 day rule where you could put tents up for 28 days without planning permission. Yeah. During COVID that got doubled to 56 and they've never rescinded that.
Andy Povey: Okay.
Ray Hole: Now if you can synchronise your tent experience or whatever type of accommodation tends to are useful because they're very low cost. The entry level is really cheap. Okay. If you can synchronise that with say, you know, a tulip season or a blue bell season or something. Yeah. So you sleep in the tulips. Yeah, yeah. What's interesting at tulips is a seven week period anyway. Yeah. So. So that's actually quite, quite, you know. Yeah. But it could be a festival. I mean, the other thing about staying somewhere out of season, like staying somewhere for Halloween. Why not? Yeah. Why not be frightened all night? Yeah, yeah. Did you get much sleep there? No, not at all. You know, so. So when we've done sleeping with lions, we did that at London Zoo. Yeah.
Ray Hole: It's quite funny where it's the worst night's sleep you ever get.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ray Hole: The lions are really active. Oh, it's wonderful. And the thing is, if you're close enough, the sound on your chest. Oh, it's absolutely mind blowing. Yeah.
Andy Povey: You're getting in sync with the lion.
Ray Hole: Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. But the thing is, you get the worst night's sleep so everybody wakes up really. So. Oh, goodness me. Like you go and get your breakfast. But it's the commonality, the empathy. Yeah. Stay together, you know. But fear is a wonderful. I mean, one of the things. We stayed in a conservancy in Kenya with the longleat client and we had a ranger master, my arranger, outside. And you knew animals were there and they weren't coming to say hello. I mean, you know, you were their supper. Yeah. And you go, whoa. Yeah. And so. So what an experience, you see.
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Ray Hole: So, so. Yeah. So accommodation. Yeah. Is, is. But you have to find what's right for yours. So you can't just chuck in a. A sort of shepherd's hut or a yurt or even a tent, you know, what's what. What, what's what? You know, what's on message, I suppose, you know, as a toast. Yeah, yeah.
Andy Povey: Come back to the experience.
Ray Hole: What's authentic to what you're trying to create. And if you do that really well. Yeah, goodness me. The revenue gen from that, you know, is quite remarkable. Yeah. So, yeah, accommodation is a really fundamental part, but it does fit into my sort of experiential factory idea, you know,
Andy Povey: So I love that. Right. Fantastic conversation.
Ray Hole: Yeah. We do bump into each other every conference known to man, you know, but, you know, and it's nice to have a chat about things and, you know, and we talk about trends and. And like, you know, and. But actually the trends are just really conversational pieces because you don't know which one's going to sustain or even one could be a, you know, like, bank, you know, the dismal land in six months. Goodness me, if you could replicate that for six months, you can retire on the revenue generation, you know. So the idea of trend is fascinating and these conversations that we're having today are really important for that. You know, I suppose you just function, you know, just applying, you know, doing stuff. No, no. Conversations are really valuable.
Andy Povey: Absolutely. So I'm gonna sum up with the idea, the concept of a fun factory driven by a bunch of people around a round table in a cabinet, style listeners. If you can implement something like that for your attraction and start looking at everything from the experience, I think you get Ray's seal of approval and that should turn into some bad notes. Thank you, Ray. Lovely to speak to you.
Ray Hole: Thoroughly enjoyed that.
Andy Povey: This episode was written by Emily Burrows, edited by Steve Folland and produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Enwistle from Plaster, as well as Wenalyn Dionaldo from Skip the Queue HQ. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like share and comment on the episode in your podcast app. It really helps to spread the word about us and the amazing attractions we work with.
Be sure to visit SkipTheQueue.fm for this episode's transcriptions and to listen to the rest of the seasons over. Once again, thank you for listening. I've been your host, Andy Povey. See you next time.