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Contents

Coursework Header Sheet. 1

Introduction. 3

Queue Management. 4

Conclusion. 8

Recommendations. 9

Changes made

In the following revision, grammar corrections have been done and changes in the literature have also been made to further deepen the understanding of queue management in theme parks and service delivery industries. The paragraph discusses what is meant by the queue management system and the various types of queues that service providers encounter. Further, a discussion of the effectiveness of the Disneyland queuing management system is also done in this revision. Finally, recommendations for Disneyland park on how to improve their effectiveness on queue management are given in the final paragraph.

Introduction

The waiting times are becoming an increasingly significant aspect of improving the experience of the customers in theme parks. The always present problem of long queues for attractions and rides is seen to be tacked with unique systems that are designed to handle priority. The innovations allow the consumers to join other available queues that generally bypass the congestion in parks faced by regular consumers. The following study discusses the queuing management and operation in the theme parks in a critical way. By understanding some of the concepts, the study specifically analyses the significance of queue management in theme parks in consideration of the theories of supply and demand and also the psychology of queuing. The significance of the study of queue management is the fact that queuing is an aspect of theme parks and service industries that are unavoidable. Normally, the majority of service providing activities require that the customers wait hence queuing experience. Carneman (1993) states that people are usually concerned with the length of the queue as opposed to the speed of the service providers.

Queue management is seen to have significant impacts on the economy, customer waiting psychology, service efficiency, and expectations. A moderate amount of queuing reflects the popularity of certain projects in the park. On the contrary, if the number of people exceeds the expectation, it will lead to a negative effect or even a scene confusion. Therefore, according to literature research, there is a positive correlation between the area with the most perfect queuing management and the area with the longest waiting time (Wright,2003). The following study uses literature to show bring the understanding of the various ways in which theme parks and service industries are handling queue management. The paper uses Disneyland theme park as a case study in the management of queues. It also analyzes the existing problems in the theme park’s queue management, analyzes its causes, and proposes improvement measures and suggestions.

The following research is aimed at gaining a better understanding of queue management in theme parks and service provision spaces. Further, the paper aims at studying the ways that are being used at Disneyland theme park to improve the efficiency in service delivery.

Queue Management

Queue management systems platforms are a collection of platforms that are mainly used to effectively and efficiently manage the requests of consumers. It is a system which enables the consumers to connect with the concerned representatives of a theme park or any other organization to obtain the required services or products. There are various types of queues namely structured queues, unstructured queues, kiosk-based queues, and mobile queues. In structured queues, people normally form predictable and fixed queues and are common in supermarkets and banks among other retail locations. Unstructured queues are unpredictable and vary in terms of direction and locations. This is mostly the case in taxi queues, ATMs, some forms of retail, and high demand periods. Kiosk-based queues are normally used for banking, medical, telecom, and various governmental institutions. On arrival, the consumers select the service they need and feed their information and the required representative is presented with the information. Mobile queues allow consumers to queue using their mobile phones. The consumers normally receive notifications that when it is their turn. Queuing solutions mainly revolve around information, allocation, waiting, call, reception, and management.

The key to a good attraction is a distinctive tourist attraction, which is the heart of the tourist market (Wang., et al.,2008). The more popular the item queue phenomenon is, the more unavoidable it is. Measures are of great importance to the development of tourism. A large part of the success of a management decision is determined by management skills, the resources available, and the quality of the service (Boudreau, et al.,2004). For example, queue management skills, revenue management, employee management, etc. The second reason is the customer’s attitude,( Dennis., et al,1996). Because we face the consumers of the end customers, when the customers have a good impression of the product, it helps to promote and profit the product，which mainly focuses on the psychological perspective of tourists. The last is employee satisfaction. Only when the employees are satisfied can we have a good mood to bring better service to customers (Dennis. et al.,1996).

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the number of visitors to theme parks has also increased. Some data show that the rate of customer loss is less than 10% in parks with perfect queue management than in parks with poor queue management (Wright,2003). Tourists have to wait in line for several hours to experience a popular amusement facility. The feelings and opinions generated in the waiting process will affect customers’ perception of the waiting experience (cope, r.f., et al, 2011), thus reducing customer satisfaction and customer return rate. In serious cases, the ideal sales rate may not be achieved. For example, although the guests in the park mainly play theme parks, secondary attractions such as restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. The longer the customers queue up, the less time and money they can spend to eat and shop at the same time, which directly affects the company’s extra profit. With the increase in the number of customers queuing, the service efficiency of employees will be reduced. Therefore, effective queuing management can make full use of the limited-service capacity and maximize income. How to enable customers to participate in other activities while waiting for their expected activities at a specified time (cope, r.f., et al., 2008).

It is undeniable that waiting in line is usually the first service encountered, and the quality of the queue directly determines customer satisfaction. A theme park is required to have personnel and equipment arrangement that is reasonable and have personnel that solves the supply and demand relationship in the queue management system. To achieve better management the customer roles and the operations need to be understood. These are essential for the success of the ques management system (Davis & Heineken, 1994). Most of the people going to the theme park are mainly elderly and children, supplemented by young people. Considering the different age levels, create a comfortable waiting environment, deepen services, and improve service staff to take initiative to provide services.

There is no doubt that tourists can bring considerable benefits to the scenic area. For example, according to the survey: in 2006, Hong Kong Ocean Park received 5 million tourists. Although the increase in the number of tourists will bring considerable income and profits to the park (Heung, Tsang & Chang, 2010), orderly queuing can make the service of staff more perfect and efficient. On the other hand, it also reflects some negative aspects. Overcrowding also leads to safety problems and queuing problems (Heung, Tsang & Chang, 2010). At the same time, the consumption cost of the park has also greatly increased. Due to the increase in the number of tourists, the inspection of the number of employees and security issues has to be carried out more demandingly. This also means that the park will spend more costs to hire more.

According to the researchers, the patience of queuing shows that there are significant differences in the acceptance time between Chinese and Western tourists. For the acceptance waiting time, Chinese and Western tourists have different standards. The average acceptance waiting time is 15.2 and 21.3 minutes (Heung, Tsang & Chang, 2010). The waiting time of the general entertainment facilities in the parking area is generally greater than the waiting time of this tourist, or even several times longer than the waiting time. Therefore, through queuing psychology, long-term waiting will reduce customer perceived service quality, and effective queuing management can minimize the related adverse effects (Davis & Heineken, 1994). First, the optimization of operation methods and operation management improvement. Second, we should further analyze all operational problems and how to work efficiently. Through redesign, customers can get services as soon as possible. The specific methods can be divided into several ways. One is to increase service personnel. The second is to extend the service time, the third is to increase the equipment to improve the operational capabilities of the enterprise, and the fourth is to determine the appropriate queuing structure to ensure efficient and convenient operations (Pearce,1989).

Generally, because the park belongs to a leisure and entertainment tourism destination, it will attract people of different ages and meet different tourism purposes. Because the number of tourists will gather in one place intensively, and because of the change of customer arrival rate and the uncertainty of service time, these two reasons cause waiting. Only in one case, waiting can be avoided, that is to say, customers are required to arrive at a fixed time interval and the service time is certain, which requires too precise and high time interval. Because it will be a complex environment, as long as the service time is uncertain, even if the customer arrives at a fixed time through the appointment time, there will also be delays. Therefore, the park usually adopts the appropriate queuing structure to operate and manage (Pearce,1989). The influence of queues on the distribution of location space and customer behavior accounts for a large part. There are three types of queuing: single-line, multi-line, and call-type. When the queues are long, the queues are obscured. Hidden teams can use batch injection to set up two or more waiting areas so that arriving customers can’t see the queues and wait for them. The confidence of customers to wait, at this point, Disneyland is doing very well.

On April 8, 2011, the first Disney theme park in mainland China was started.  On June 16, 2016, the Shanghai Disney Resort officially opened its operations and achieved operating income in the first full operating fiscal year. At the end of October 2017, the number of tourists exceeded 27 million (Song, 2018). And the average footfall is as high as 30,000 (zhu di, 2016). Generally, theme parks, witness a “snake” queuing structure. When customers do not get services, they are easily bored and pay more attention to time than they have something to do. Some reports show that taking the “Fast Light Wheel” as an example, the average queue time per person is about 1-2 hours or even longer. Most customers start to queue for up to two hours from the beginning of entering the park.  In terms of calculation, the average person can only play three to four popular entertainment items per day (dengshulundao,2018). To date, Disneyland has taken several steps into easing the psychology of customers. First of all, provide some activities for the waiting customers to fill the time, such as displaying readings next to entertainment projects, playing interesting videos of advertisements, and waiting in line to have a little space for shooting.  Not only that, but the unknown waiting based on the psychological analysis of the queue will also cause customers to feel anxious and feel that their waiting time is out of control. Therefore, an electronic time card is set up next to the entertainment project to show that the tourists are expected to wait a long time.

The show attracted some people to watch, and multiple restaurants and souvenir shops were set up in the park to attract some queuing staff to ease the pressure of queuing.  Finally, the park has also set up fast-track tickets. With the advancement of social technology, paper tickets have been replaced by electronic tickets, and customers can grab tickets online at the time of issuance.  It also played a role in alleviating the pressure of queuing.  Not only that, but considering that there is a single guest, a single queuing passage is also set up to reduce the pressure of queuing.  The sales of tickets are also limited so that people in the park can have a comfortable environment to play.  Improvement By applying various queuing management methods, not only can the customer’s queuing time be reduced, but also the working pressure of the service staff can be reduced. Customers can also watch the performance, and the sense of experience also increases as the queuing time decreases.

Disneyland introduced customers based on demand and customer priority levels and divided customers into different modules based on the fare level (Theme Park Construction News,2018). This means that customers who pay premiums or even need to pay up to ten times the price will often get priority. For example, if you pay a higher fee, you will get a VIP skip-the-line priority pass, so it can be effective in the experience of various projects, reduce your queuing time, play the entire paradise efficiently, and enjoy the most distinguished VIP service, but in disguise, it is a kind of civilized “cut line”(Theme Park Construction News,2018). This is a good opportunity for Shanghai Disney to make a profit, and it can be understood as “deformed” as spreading the queuing army and limiting the queuing venue and the number of people to the effect of queuing management.  Because most people who play Disneyland buy ordinary tickets, when they see staff members with VIP customers enter the game program in advance during the queue, customer psychology will change, and complaints will occur during the long queue.

Psychologically, there will be some bad phenomena, such as customer complaints, long queues, and someone is cutting in. In this era of information and data, many people will discuss the long queue time of Disney online. Therefore, if the staff does not handle it properly, it will have a negative impact.  Customer experience is also not good.  According to the latest quarterly earnings report released by Disney in 2019, the number of tourists has decreased due to management issues such as long queue times, service attitude, and quality(sanwenyu,2019). Therefore, the following suggestions are put forward for the above problems. First, reduce the maximum personnel capacity of the park appropriately. Second, VIP has priority to keep free of queuing tickets, but the time and number interval of “queue jumping” increase a little, reducing the psychological gap of other customers. Third, because of the special situation of some families, the phenomenon of one person queuing up and several people enjoying entertainment items at the same time is prohibited as much as possible, because if there are suddenly several people jumping in line in front of tourists, it will cause some adverse effects and serious customer conflict. Fourth, increase the number of entertainment facilities, the number of queuing channels and the number of staff services to improve service efficiency.

Considering the popularity of Disneyland all over the world, it is expected that they would have numerous visits daily. The estimates show that they can be expecting 600,000 visits daily (Ren 2016). For these reasons, people are seen to que for long before getting the required services. For example, the six-month World Expo of 2010 in Shanghai attracted 70 million visitors (Ren 2016). This meant a significant peak of the visitors to the theme park. With long queues, Disneyland would not take advantage of the crowds and obtain good profits. Even with the premium tickets approach taken, it is quite hard for them to meet the demands of the ever-increasing and a fluctuating number of visitors to the park. There is a great need for an advanced queuing management system that ensures efficacy and good customer service. Further, having premium tickets as an approach of managing queues is quite unfair to the consumers and looks discriminatory.

Conclusion

In summary, as a new tourist attraction, the theme park has become an important destination for people to travel. The problems they face are numerous and complex. Long queues not only cause congestion and confusion in the space but also reduce The enthusiasm of the staff to receive customers directly affects the quality of service. For customers, a good play experience is a sign of the success of queue management. We should not only start from the most basic customer needs, what customers need, what we create, but also consider whether the number of facilities and equipment meet the supply and demand relationship, so that not only can we bring efficient profits, but also can get good publicity for the company’s brand To retain the old customers and bring some potential new customers. Due to the limitation of geographical location during the queuing process, providing customers with some videos, snacks, and visually-shifting things. To alleviate the pressure of queuing performances, arranging group photos of different cartoon characters and other well-designed interactive links will help customers to wait.

Although the queue is not the main acting area, it is a part of the entire venue. It has a certain pre-show function, although it can visually bring a popular first image of customers. In the process of queuing, due to the limitation of geographical location, we provide customers with some videos, snacks, and visual transfer. To relieve the pressure of queuing, we arrange carefully designed interactive links such as different cartoon characters to take photos, which will help customers to wait a little longer. Although the queuing is not the leading area, it is the Yi Bu Fen of the whole venue. Although VIP service will bring high profits to the company, it will still cause some incomprehensible customer problems and even bring negative effects to the company.

Recommendations

The managers in theme parks must improve the queue management to ensure that the needs of the visitors are met and also guarantee a positive park experience. If there is no queue management, it will be impossible to estimate the number of customers, and it will be difficult to reasonably arrange staff during peak periods, which will affect work performance, and if there are too many customers waiting, the staff will be affected by the poor environment which leads to a turnover. Queue management plays a very important role in tourism and hospitality, and greatly affects consumers’ intuitive feelings. Disneyland may take an approach to implement a virtual queuing system that will enable the consumers to queue with their phone and book tickets earlier before reaching the park. This will help minimize the time the visitors spend in the queues waiting to enter the park. Further, an automatic ticket confirmation system will also ensure the efficacy of the system and also reduce the confirmation times.

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