Spotlight: Wendy Babineaux, Director of Event Operations at Houston Zoo

You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of AttendMedia. Jenny, today we’ve got a spotlight episode. Wendy Babineaux, she is the event operations manager at Houston Zoo, really enjoyed our conversation with Wendy. Yeah, excited about this conversation we’ve got. Two things really we’re covering with Wendy today and when she’s the event manager, right, we’re going to talk a lot about events at the Houston Zoo specifically about the evolution of one kind of preimposed COVID and how they were able to make it a huge success and really a kind of a shoulder season for the zoo. And then two is a really hot topic that I think a lot of cultural attractions are interested in which is dynamic pricing and the Houston Zoo started this back in 2019 so she’s got a lot to share in terms of the evolution of it, how to get started, what a timeline looks like, pain points, so much good stuff to share. Yep, let’s get into it. Wendy, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. All right, so tell us about your journey. How did you end up at the Houston Zoo? So I actually I came from a retail background so I worked in retail management for about 10 years before I came to the zoo. I was a volunteer for a few years. I started out in the admissions department, worked in admissions for a little bit. I worked in group reservations. I was in membership and I have been in a ven operations for a little over five years now. So I’ve kind of been a little all over the zoo so I have a little bit of a background in the operations of things as far as admissions and membership in the guest services aspect. And now I’m in my, what I feel like is has become my niche in planning events and executing events like zoo lights and Zubu and all of our 21 and up events. So anything really that’s public facing is what my role in Compass is now. So how tell us a little more about this role overall like how many people report to you, what departments do you kind of work with, what is the day in the life look like as the event operations manager? So I have two direct reports but really our department works with every department in the zoo. So from animal teams to grounds and housekeeping to admissions to finance literally everyone, we’ve been animal nutrition. We literally work with everyone in some form or fashion for the execution of everything that we do. So whether it is our 21 and up events where we’re working with our catering team and with our SSA catering team, we’re working with animal teams to make sure that we have great animal encounters for our guests. We’re working with facilities and grounds and housekeeping to get things set up. Or we’re working with our animal nutrition team to make sure that the animals are getting the enrichment that we want the animals to have to really enhance those animal experiences for our guests during those events as well. So how many events overall are you planning and overseeing for the Houston Zoo throughout the year? So it starts really with zoo lights where we’re planning year round. So even those zoo lights is only actually happening from November through the beginning of January. We’re really working on it, planning it year round. Also another one of our large ones is Zubu, which has become a month long celebration in the month of October. All of our 21 and up events. So my favorite feast with the beast, which is our big Epicurian event, 21 and up. A lot of local Houston area restaurants come out, sample food. It’s a big fundraiser for the zoo. We do beer tastings, wine tastings. And then we have our temporary exhibit where the kids come out and see something exciting like an animatronic dinosaur exhibit, for example. All of those things are part of our realm, so to speak. Awesome. All those events, which ones do you think you’re the most proud of? What story do you want to share with the audience today? Yeah, as much as I love the 21 and up events, just because selfishly, I love a 21 and up event, personally. Probably the one that I’m the most proud of and excited about is how we’ve been able to evolve the Zubu event from the way that it was pre-COVID. So as a lot of zoos are probably familiar with and remember pre-COVID, there is a lot of handing out candy. For us, it was three weekends in October. We would choose three weekends. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we would pass out candy. There’d be a lot of activations around the zoo. Just a lot of manual labor, I like to say, because that’s really what it was. There was a lot of work for the staff, a lot of volunteer engagement was required to execute it and make it happen. In the end, there was always seem to be a lot more guest dissatisfaction than there was satisfaction at the end of the day. I go back and I remember kids being upset because they didn’t get enough candy. They didn’t get the candy that they wanted. But from a staff perspective, the zoo was a mess because there were candy wrappers everywhere. Our grounds and housekeeping was working over time to clean up the zoo afterward. Animal teams were upset because candy wrappers were ending up inside zoo exhibits. So it was just a constant push and pull to make everybody happy. And we really took 2020 is kind of bad as it sounds. We really took that as an opportunity to change the narrative and reevaluate the way that we looked at Zubu and the way that we said how we wanted that event to be. So we sat down and were like, all right, well, we’re at least open. So that’s number one. We’re able to open the zoo again fully. Even though at that time, we were limited capacity still being that it was October. But we said, all right, well, we really were not comfortable passing out candies. So how are we going to get away from passing out candy? So the first thing we did was eliminate that aspect. And then we turned, we went away from having it to where it was just three weekends and converted it into a month-long celebration. So instead of focusing on nine days out of the month, we said, let’s do the entire month of October. Let’s just make this all Zubu. And we focused on, we focused on a lot of photo ops, a lot of large-scale decor. We invested a lot more into the animal side of things. So we invested a lot more into the keeper chats that we would have. So we put a lot more into the animal side of things. So whether it was the enrichment for the animals, whether it was by more pumpkins, by more just enrichment items for the animals to engage with, that’s where we put our money into, basically. And we promoted it as a month-long event. And of course, there was a lot of pushback from people like, where’s the candy? Where’s the candy? Of course, you would have kids coming in with their trick or treat baskets, even though we were very clear that there’s not going to be any candy. So there was disappointment there. We did have to get over those hurdles, but in the end, it’s been such a blessing really that we have been able to continue that since 2020. Now we’re in year 2024. We just came off of our best October that we’ve ever had from an attendance and revenue standpoint. Just off of being able to promote that as a month-long celebration, being able to add more and more to it every year. As we have seen the success. So in every year, fewer and fewer people mention that there’s no candy. So for me, that’s been the biggest success story for me personally, just knowing that we’ve been able to not only create a great event for the public and for families to come out, but that it’s also been equally successful for the staff, from a, from a, just a staff satisfaction standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint for the, for the success of the zoo as well. And then how about reaching new audiences with this? So it’s no longer just the, you know, kids trick or treating on Saturdays, right? You’ve got, kind of mentioned some of the 21 and up events. You’ve got scare zones now, right? How’s that evolved? There really be more mass appealing to everybody. Yeah, so I’m glad that you brought that up because one thing that we also did. So after, when we introduced this month long celebration, we were, of course, since we’re in October, we’re already gearing up for zoo lights. So one, one, one September August hits, we’re already starting to put, put up lights around the zoo. The ones that you can’t see, obviously, we’re not putting up snowmany yet, but we’re putting lights in the trees, we’re putting the infrastructure out. So all of this stuff was already in place. So I had the idea of like, hey, why don’t we maybe stay open a little bit later one night and turn some of these lights on where things are RGB now. So they’re easier to change from color to color with a remote and a switch instead of the actual string lights. The animal teams were open to it. Our executive team was open to it. So we tried it. It was so successful that as guests were leaving, they were telling our admissions team, hey, what are you all doing this again? Is this happening tomorrow night or are we doing this next week? And we obviously weren’t because it was just a one time thing that we were trying to see how it would work. And so we got such great feedback from it the following year. We added more nights. So we did every Friday night where we would stay open late for families, date night, whatever. Like we see a gamut of people who come to check out the zoo once it gets dark and we turn on the lights in a spooky kind of way for for Zubu. And then this year we extended it to 12 nights. So we just stay open late. The animals will kind of go to bed on their own. So we still keep animal welfare, of course, at the forefront, but it’s giving a different audience of people a different experience. So for the families that aren’t able to get their kids out of school early, to get to the zoo, to see the Zubu festivities during the week, they’re able to come out and stay a little bit later. And for those date night couples, it’s also a place for them to come as well. So it’s it has broadened our horizons to a completely different audience. Yeah. So I mean, you’re kind of carrying on all these, I guess moving away from sort of being pigeon-holed as like the zoo is only for families and young kids and introducing all kinds of different activities for everyone in the community, which I think if we think about our job as advertisers really, it’s always focused on driving in the next visitor or driving in a new visitor, right? So you’ve got to be able to have something to offer them. So you know, rotating in all of these different events throughout the year or you know, being able to market not only kid friendly, but date night friendly. I mean, that’s awesome stuff that we want to have and be able to pull into our messaging and our marketing plans, right? So I know it’s a lot of work for you and your team, but it’s what ends up making it really successful, making these campaigns really successful. And it sounds like you guys are seeing that with the attendance numbers and records that you’re breaking too. So that’s awesome job. You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions Podcast. Conversations on how non-profit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend media is a media planning and buying agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information, please visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny. All right, Wendy. So a hot topic this year of the last few years really has been all about dynamic pricing. The Houston zoos started this five years ago, right? So I feel like you were probably on the forefront of this transition. So I want to talk to you about why you did it, but my first question is, can you maybe share some of the differences between what a lot of people are doing, which is variable pricing versus what dynamic pricing actually is? Sure. So specifically with dynamic ticket pricing. So we went straight into dynamic ticket pricing. So we work with, first of all, our ticketing platform, we work with Gateway. So Galaxy is our ticketing platform. And we work with Digin X to actually create our ticket pricing. So they have economists and they have the whole system in place already where they look at all of the information to come up with those prices. So instead of just saying Monday through Friday, the price is going to be this and on weekends, the price is going to be this, we’re a lot more robust in the way that our ticket pricing looks. So in 2019, when we first rolled out dynamic ticket pricing, we started with the zoo lights. We were a little hesitant to just go all in with the general admission and everything. So we started with zoo lights. And we did, we did it based on the night. So a Tuesday, a Tuesday night could look like, you know, 12.95 a ticket. The next Wednesday, if there was rain in the forecast, it might be 11.65 or something like that. And all of those things would, all of that information was taken into account on a daily basis. And those prices would change on a daily basis. So one of the things that our marketing team would use to sell tickets is to let people know that by early for the best price. Because that was one of our biggest challenges when we first introduced dynamic ticket pricing was we went from an environment where this was the price. We went from an environment where, hey, this is the price every single night. If you remember, you get this price to, hey, the price is going to change every single night and the price is going to change every single day. So if you’re looking to buy a ticket for this coming Saturday and you wait three days, that price is going to change by the time you come back to the website to buy that ticket. So it took a little time to really train our guest to buy that ticket early for the best price, which is what we literally were telling them all the time was by early for the best price because that was indeed true. So that was kind of a challenge for us in the beginning. But in general, it really allowed us to spread the attendance. So we were able to show our guest online on the website that, hey, if you’re buying a ticket, if you’re wanting to come on a Tuesday, you’re going to pay a little bit less, you’re not going to have the same crowd as if you want to come on a Saturday. And you’re going to pay more for the ticket when you come on a Saturday. How about from a, so you’re able to spread the crowd out more that makes for a better guest experience, of course, it helps you, you know, your team kind of plan throughout the week. How about the impact on revenue? What have you guys seen so far there? So that’s the other great thing about, about working with DigiNex in particular is we’re able to, to set our revenue goals to say, hey, these are our revenue goals for the entire season and really calculate what we need to do from an attendance standpoint and give that information to them and they work with us to determine what we’re going to need to do from a ticket pricing standpoint on a daily basis to meet those goals. So instead of it all being on us and our finance team to make those decisions, we have their support to be able to say, hey, even if you just bump this up 10 cents, this is what you’re going to be able to do. So and also saying giving them the authority to bump a price up by a dime or a nickel even in a, in a day, that can make a huge difference even though it doesn’t sound like very much when you’re selling 10,000 tickets in a night, that can make, that can make or break your, your day, your week or month. So is your team having to like approve this on a daily basis? They come through and say, hey, here’s what the price should be tomorrow and you say yes or no, like accept a climb or they have authority to change it if it’s by so much like how’s that process work? Yeah, that’s a great question. So we get a spreadsheet, we get a spreadsheet twice a day that shows us what their recommendations are and we have the authority to put a stop on it. If it’s not something that we feel is, is doable. We do put limits of course on what the max ticket price should be and they don’t exceed that but for the, for the ticket price, it’s a, it’s a, once it’s said it’s gone but we do have the ability to stop it if we, if we feel we need to. Um, okay. So why isn’t every zoo out there doing this like, well, this seems like amazing. It’s more revenue, I love what you said about the five, tencent incremental kind of increase there. Like what were the some of the pain points back when you guys first started? Maybe we can start with that question. You know, to be honest, probably the, the biggest pain point was just getting the buy-in, getting the buy-in of everyone on the team to make the change because it is scary. It’s very scary to say in, in, like I said, the, just changing the mindset of the guest of, from a guest standpoint of saying that, hey, this is the price every day. We’re going from, we’ve been having the same price for years. The guest knows that they’re going to go to the website and this is going to be the price of the ticket and it might change every year. We might go up a dollar every year or something like that. Um, and, and knowing that that we’ve got to change the mindset of the guest, that’s scary. Um, and it’s scary too knowing that we’re kind of relying on a third party to tell us what our price is should be. Um, that’s, it, we’re giving, we’re giving up some control. Um, and that can be scary for a lot of people. So that, that’s a big, that’s a big hurdle to overcome, but at the end of the day, um, when you put that, that trust in to the process and you start seeing the results and you start seeing that it does have a positive guest impact. It has a positive guest impact. It has a positive impact for the staff as well, um, because you are able to spread out that attendance. You’re not having 20,000 people rush into the zoo on a Friday morning of a spring break, um, just overwhelming your admissions team. You’re not having 20,000 people trying to find parking in your public parking lot that you share with the city park. Um, your, you start to see the benefits and the benefits far outweigh any hesitation that you may have had. All right, Wendy, I hear what you’re saying about the challenges like getting your customers, your visitors to understand. You guys have moved to this dynamic pricing model, but heck, you know, airlines are done this way, hotels are done this way. Besides just getting your customers, your visitors used to that, whether some other challenges that you or maybe another zoo might face in moving to dynamic pricing. So as any change that you implement in your facility, getting your, getting things implemented on your web store can always be a challenge. There’s going to be, there’s going to be testing that has to be done a ton of testing, a lot and lot and lot of testing. So that was probably the, um, most cumbersome part of the process is just making sure that everything works seamlessly so that there weren’t any hiccups so that the, the, the guest saw the good experience. Like you mentioned, you go, you buy airline tickets, you buy the airline ticket, you don’t see, you don’t see the backend stuff, you just know that if you choose the flight at 2 p.m., it’s cheaper than the one. It’s 7.30 in the morning and you, and you buy it. Um, so it, it’s similar with, with this process, it took a lot of testing and it took a lot on the part of our IT team and our finance team just to make sure that everything worked seamlessly on the backend. Um, so there was a lot of time commitment involved in that, which is, which is one of the reasons why we chose to start with Zoo Lights first, make sure that that ran comfortably for a couple seasons before we introduced it into the entire Zoo, general admission, all of the, all of the things. So if there’s another zoo out there, maybe looking, considering implementing this dynamic testing, you’re saying a piece of advice would be start small, start with that separate time ticket, maybe to your holiday lights event and grow from there. Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that we did too, when we started, when we started this, we were just doing per day. So as I mentioned, we, Tuesday was a price, Wednesday was a price, Thursday was a price. Once we got more comfortable with it, now we have dynamic price during, during the day. So we will have three prices during the actual day to even facilitate more choice for the guest and maximize, maximize that profitability as well, knowing that the guest wants to come earlier in the day or earlier in the night when it comes to a Zoo Lights, a Zoo Lights event, for instance, and they will pay a little bit more to be able to come at six versus eight or nine o’clock in the evening. So going back to when you started, 2019 Zoo Lights, right? To get your, like, from when you started talking about, we should do dynamic pricing to Zoo Lights dynamic pricing. Like, what was that timeline? Did it start in that fiscal year? Did it start two years prior? Like, what, what did that timeline look like? No, from what I remember, because this has been a long time ago, we, I mean, we started, we started talking about it before I was even in the, in the role I’m in now. I remember us talking about the idea back when I was still in the membership department. So it was years in the making of just, just the idea of it and liking the idea of it and seeing what was possible because at that time, it was still, it was still new. It was not a lot of places were doing it. We wanted to make sure it worked. We wanted to make sure that we wanted to see other people doing it, see if it was working for them before we jumped in. So from once we, we made the commitment to implementing it, it was, it was a good few months of the testing, all of the testing through Diginex, making sure that everything was integrated into Galaxy. And then on our end, making sure that it looked how we wanted it to look from a guest standpoint. Okay. So, so give yourself a start in January and prepare for your holiday. At least. At the very least, yes, for sure. And in a couple years to sell it internally, right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, at least. These are totally normal timelines for, for implementing new software. Yeah. Wendy, I just want to say thanks for sharing all that, sharing your story because I know there’s a bunch of our audience out there that’s maybe where you guys were previous to 2019 and just kind of hearing, you know, the war story and the actual journey and then kind of that evolution. I love what you said about the three prices during the day, especially for your more holiday-focused events. That’s really cool. All right, Jenny. Why don’t you hit Wendy with our last question here? All right. Famous last question for the show, right? So what do you think that zoos and other cultural attractions should be doing more of, or even less of, if you decide, in marketing? So, you know, when I think of, when I think of the typical zoo, the thing that strikes me most of all is, what are we doing? To grow our, our attendance space. So what are we doing to, to grow our demographic? A lot of people look at zoos and they, they tend to just think of that typical guest, the member, the family, like you all mentioned before, the stroller mom, like whoever that may be, the, the, the general stereotypical zoo guest. And I think a big challenge for any marketing team, especially for a zoo is how are you reaching a more diverse audience? How are you bringing in a more diverse group of people? And, and we try to do that a lot here by incorporating a lot more of those 21 and up events. It’s still a challenge because how are you getting different, a different crowd with those 21 and up events? Are you still getting the same people coming to all your 21 and up events? Just without the strollers, right? Yeah, like, or are you getting different people every time? You know, so it’s, it’s a challenge. How are you using social media? I feel like every day there’s a different form of social media advertising that’s coming up on the market and just staying in tune with that stuff is a challenge. Just as a social media user, not even a creator of content, it’s a challenge. So I think just, just finding a way to broaden that audience to make your, your, grow your membership in a different way, but just grow your attendance in a different way is a huge challenge. Oh, preach Wendy. We’re speaking the same language over here. It’s a perfect segue to remind our audience. You should check out our influencer marketing as paid advertising episode. If you want to get some ideas on how to reach that younger, more diverse audience through social media. Wendy, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve been an excellent guest and we really appreciate your time. Thank y’all. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. 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