For one of the city's busiest organisations, ATEED, the ability to understand visitors has a material impact on a wide range of resources and decisions. Until it engaged with data analytics innovator Qrious, ATEED had limited insights through traditional methods and had to make do with projections and estimations.
ATEED needed to understand their event visitors, so they can provision resources effectively and deliver an outstanding event experience for attendees. For the Lantern Festival and the Volvo Ocean Race, Qrious provided ATEED with location insights about their audience numbers, what area they came from, where they stayed, and for how long.
ATEED is the economic growth agency for the Auckland region. They are tasked with driving innovation and transforming the local economy so that Auckland is a desirable place to visit, live, work, play, invest and do business.
ATEED funds up to 40 major events per year and were immediately intrigued by Qrious’ Visitor Insights offering, and its ability to lift the veil on what was really happening at events. Up until this point, ATEED had been relying on manually gathered data through ‘pen and paper’ surveys and methods such as crowd counts to assess and forecast audiences.
Bringing data sources together
By leveraging the power of publicly available data stores, aggregated anonymised Spark mobile location data and other commercial data sources, Qrious was able to deliver a transformative solution with actionable insights.
Driving actionable insights
Qrious used proprietary algorithms to identify points of interest and filter out background noise that did not relate to the events. A team of data scientists then produced a range of insights into visitor volumes, dwell times, originating suburbs and inferred audience profiles. These insights were presented in a comprehensive report.
Not only did ATEED get a far more accurate picture of the numbers attending, but insights into demographics of attendees enabled them to improve the quality of their events and deliver excellent value for money.
Understanding that most Lantern Festival attendees came from the inner-city meant ATEED reconsidered a proposal to move the event from the central city, opting for a bigger venue at Auckland Domain that would appeal to the largest part of the audience.
Rich insights provided by Qrious dispelled a range of myths about the types of people who attended different ATEED events.
Having the ability to talk to the demographics events are reaching, and backing this up with real information provided a powerful message for sponsors.