How a Dutch Theme park (Efteling) is getting ready for their day after tomorrow

Efteling is one of the most visited attraction parks and holiday destinations in Europe. In 2017, it was chosen as the best amusement park in the world. Located in the Dutch province of North Brabant, it is famous for its nostalgic enchanted forest, its state-of-the-art attractions and its friendly atmosphere. 2017 marked the park's 65th anniversary, and its history makes interesting reading. It was started in 1952 by a group of monks who wanted to give local children somewhere fun to play. Originally, the idea was to create a set of fairytale scenes in a piece of woodland owned by the local authority. But the burgomaster was an ambitious man with an ambitious plan. He chose Anton Piek, a well-known artist, to designs the scenes and the results were so magical that people not only came from the surrounding villages, but from all over the Netherlands to see them.

Today, Efteling is still owned by a foundation; nobody makes any money from the park. All the profits are split between reinvestment in the park, nature preservation projects and donations to good causes. In theory, everything that Efteling does is meant to be lasting, or 'forever', as they say. Quality and history mean more than short-term financial gain. For example, there is a rule that no more than 11% of the park can be devoted to buildings; the rest must remain natural. This is the kind of decision that typifies Efteling.

The future of customer experience in a theme park

In February 2017, I had the pleasure of accompanying the management and a group of enthusiastic staff from Efteling on a visit to Silicon Valley. My task was to draw up a programme that would teach them more about the future of customer-orientation and marketing. It was a fantastic week, during which we talked to more than 20 of the Valley's experts. The topics we discussed had nothing to do directly with amusement parks, but were focused on likely changes in consumer behaviour in the years ahead. These insights had a major impact on Efteling's development of their own Day After Tomorrow strategy.

For my latest book, customers the day after tomorrow, I interviewed Fons Jurgens, CEO of Efteling. Fons and his team have tried to map out what the customer journey will be like in 2030. In other words, they are already starting with The Day After Tomorrow. Efteling has a clearly defined area, where the opportunities for using sensors in combination with smartphones are almost limitless. With this in mind, the Efteling team began to dream about the possible future for their park. Wouldn't it be great, for example, if people didn't have to queue up at the ticket office when they arrived? In this way, physically checking the tickets could also be eliminated. People would buy their tickets in advance and just stroll into the park past sensors that would decide whether they had the right to be there or not. Instead of being welcomed by turnstiles and security monitors, they would be welcomed by fantasy figures. Investing is new parking areas will probably also be unnecessary in 2030, given the advent of self-driving cars. If you know that Efteling invests 'forever', then you can understand that for them further investment in parking space is something they would rather not do. Perhaps more in keeping with their philosophy is the idea to construct huge roundabouts to allow people to get out of their cars at the entrance to the park, before the vehicles self-drive themselves to the nearby holiday homes that their owners have booked for later that evening. Once inside the park, your personal AI assistant will help you work out your programme for the day, as well as buying your food, which can be delivered to the picnic area of your choice at the hour you stipulate. Once again, no queuing, no wasted time and no splitting up of families during lunchtime. Are some attractions more or less accessible today? Your AI assistant will tell you... These are the kind of scenarios that the Efteling team are already working out in detail. And so the world of 2030 slowly takes concrete form.

Reverse engineer a perfect customer experience

Efteling in 2030 will not only be a fun attraction park; it will be a world of perfect customer experience. An experience tailor-made to meet guests' requirements, using technology to eliminate all the things that customers currently find tiresome. But at the same time, it is also important for Efteling to maintain its identity. Good, honest human fun is the park's DNA. This will not be lost. Technology will just make things run even more smoothly, allowing Efteling more room to take its human interaction to a higher level.

That is how the world will be in 2030. That is how the Efteling experience will be in The Day After Tomorrow. Dreaming about these fantastic scenarios is a wonderful starting point. From there, the Efteling team can reverse engineer back towards the present. This brings the future very close. Of course, not everything will work out the way it is envisaged in the scenarios, but they are a good basis for making the right strategic choices. What's more, Efteling is already investigating how some elements of this future can be realized today. In fact, two such elements have already been implemented in practice.

A first benefit relates to the Dream Flight, one of the park's top attractions. Dream Flight has one major disadvantage: for safety reasons, it cannot be used by people with a handicap. To overcome this, a VR application has been developed to replicate the flight. That way, everyone can share in the experience. So even if a family needs to be separated (some go on the real ride, some follow the VR version), they can still talk about it afterwards. One of the main problems with VR is that it is usually a highly individual experience - but not in this case. From the start of 2018, this particular dream will become a reality.

Efteling has also started with its first virtual queue. Starting from September 2017, the Python roller-coaster ride no longer has long lines of waiting people. A reservation system in the Efteling app allows visitors to choose and book their own ride time. Efteling guarantees that no-one will ever need to wait for more than 15 minutes. This is long enough for the pre-ride tension to build up, but gone are the days of waiting times of up 90 minutes or more. The last few months I became clear that this test is a success. So, Efteling is adding a new ride to the virtual cue experiment. And so, the day after tomorrow comes even closer.

The way in which Efteling is preparing for the future is the ideal approach to bring The Day After Tomorrow to life. You start by looking far into the future. You write scenarios to match that future. You then reverse engineer backwards, gradually developing projects to make your dreams happen in the real world as soon as possible, sometimes even in the relatively short term. Does it always work out as planned? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing is certain: the choices you make would never be the same if you tried to start this process from the situation as it exists today.