When is litter acceptable at a Visitor Attraction?

I’m not going to tease you with a long, misleading article – the answer is NEVER and I do hope that’s your answer too! There simply cannot be a reason when litter is acceptable at your attraction/venue/business.

Occasionally there may be short periods when litter is present at our attractions because:

• it’s only just been dropped and every area/pathway/room isn’t staffed at all times
• high winds may mean litter becomes more of a challenge to collect or it may be blown around or out bins
• bins could be overflowing

I’d just like to point out that whilst it may be present it is never acceptable.

For me, presentation standards cover so many things. Cleanliness of the venue, dress and appearance of the employees and maintenance and state of repair of facilities. All of these things represent your business. They shout about how you operate, how you view yourselves and how you value your guests. If standards are sloppy and tired I think that speaks volumes and guests will, over time, pick up on this and maybe even start to feel cheated. (Not to mention the negative effect on the environment if rubbish is left unmanaged!). If you don’t care about how your business looks and what your visitors see, do you really care about your guests experience at all? If you were drawing a picture of a perfect day out I doubt very much it would have litter in!

So, how to begin looking at fixing this. Well, I feel that this starts with you and your employees. Its a culture thing right? You know the saying ‘You get the standards you walk passed’ and I think this literally can translate to litter and presentation standards. If you can walk past litter, or a broken sign, or a damaged bench then that’s what you’re happy with. A couple of ideas I have and things that have worked for me include:

• Set the standard during interview and induction. Expect employees to pick up litter as a matter of basic duties – its not ‘just because’, its because its good business.
• Make sure employees feel proud if they maintain great standards, thank them.
• Encourage your team to take ownership of issues. Make it clear that anything broken needs reporting or fixing if they can
• Set the example – if you can walk round with your team or colleagues pick up litter, set tables and chairs so they look neat, ensure walkways are free of clutter etc. not only is it great to demonstrate you care about your business its also good health and safety sense!
• Get your logistics sorted! Make sure staff patrol areas if they can, have regular presentation checks as part of your daily operation before you even open the doors to visitors and plan for busy times/peak periods with extra cleaning team members or just more bins!

There are so many more thoughts to add but if you can leave a comment or a thought of your own on how you keep your business fresh, clean and friendly then please do.

So, what’s this blog about anyway?

VisitBritain.org states that “Since 2010 tourism has been the fastest growing sector in the UK in employment terms. Britain is forecast to have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025.” A pretty impressive fact…

So, this blog is designed to offer the 9.6% of the UK population who currently work in visitor attractions somewhere to come to get ideas, share thoughts and hear about my experiences of being a manager in visitor attractions (VA). It’s for employees, managers, leaders, decision makers of these unique environments to read about all types of topics that are of interest to us in this field but may not hold much interest to friends and family. I know that if I start talking enthusiastically about ‘wayfinding’ in the pub it’s not long, even after some polite nodding along, until my pals eyes are glazing over!

I want to share with you my varied experience of working in a number of different ‘days out’ locations combined with my drive to create that much sought after perfect visitor experience!

Who am I? Well, I have worked in VA for around 17 years from pubs to paintball sites,  theme parks, castles and zoo’s to art galleries – I’ve had a pretty varied career so far and am fairly certain that in that time I have learned so much through success and plenty more through errors! I’d like to put some of this knowledge and experience somewhere where others might benefit so that’s why I decide to write this blog.

I’ll not just be looking back though. I’ll use places I visit in my usual day-to-day life to bring thoughts and ideas here so that you can read them and see if there are any nuggets to take back to your place of work or business. Some will be amazing examples of how businesses are getting it right up and down the country which can inspire us all, however, whilst I wont name and shame, I will also use examples of how NOT to do it and why not to do it so that we can learn together. I may even occasionally suggest you try something new or re-look at what you are currently doing to see if you are happy and if the customer truly is king where you are…

I’ll try to present some topics where there aren’t just ‘right and wrong’ answers but where there are your own factors to consider in your attraction and what your company’s brand/ethos/values are about which may also influence some of your decisions. I will venture into some fairly dry territory such as directional signage to some much more glamorous topics like staff engagement and creating or magic moments.

I hope you enjoy what you read and please do comment, share and use this to provoke conversations in your workplace too.