Nobody sets out to run their attraction on outdated technology. It happens gradually. The ticketing system that was cutting-edge in 2015 still works, mostly. The website was redesigned three years ago and it’s fine, kind of. The staff scheduling spreadsheet is a nightmare but everyone knows how to use it.
Each of these systems works in isolation. But together, they create an invisible tax on your operation — a tax paid in wasted staff hours, missed revenue opportunities, frustrated guests, and strategic decisions made on incomplete information.
The Staff Time Tax
Ask your operations manager how they spend their Monday mornings. If the answer involves manually transferring data between systems, reformatting reports, reconciling numbers that don’t match, or troubleshooting a system that crashed over the weekend, your technology is stealing your most valuable resource: skilled people’s time.
One mid-sized aquarium calculated that their team spent 22 hours per week on manual data entry and report generation that could be automated. That’s more than half a full-time salary spent on work a modern system handles automatically. Multiply that by years, and the hidden cost is staggering.
The Revenue You Can’t See
Outdated technology doesn’t just cost money directly — it prevents you from earning money you never knew was possible. Without a mobile platform, you can’t do push notifications, in-app upselling, mobile food ordering, or dynamic pricing. Without integrated analytics, you can’t identify which programs are underperforming or which guest segments are underserved.
These aren’t theoretical capabilities. They’re standard features that your competitors are using right now to earn 20-40% more per guest than you are. The cost of outdated technology isn’t what you’re paying for it — it’s what you’re not earning because of it.
The Guest Experience Gap
Your guests compare you to every other digital experience in their life, not just other attractions. They book restaurants on OpenTable, navigate with Google Maps, order groceries on Instacart, and manage their lives from their phones. When they arrive at your attraction and are handed a paper map and told to check the chalkboard for show times, the contrast is jarring.
This doesn’t necessarily make them angry — but it creates a subtle perception of being behind the times. And perception matters. A guest who perceives your attraction as modern and well-run rates the overall experience higher, spends more, and is more likely to recommend you. Technology is a signal of quality, whether we like it or not.
The Security and Reliability Risk
Legacy systems aren’t just inconvenient — they’re increasingly dangerous. Software that no longer receives security updates is a liability. A data breach involving guest payment information or personal details isn’t just expensive to resolve — it’s catastrophic to trust.
Similarly, systems built on deprecated platforms become harder and more expensive to maintain each year. The pool of developers who can work on your 2014-era custom system shrinks annually, driving up contractor rates and extending timelines for even simple changes.
The Modernization Path
The good news is that modernizing doesn’t have to be a Big Bang project. The most successful technology transitions happen incrementally, starting with the system that creates the most pain and delivering quick wins that build organizational confidence.
For most attractions, the highest-impact starting point is a modern guest-facing platform — a mobile app with maps, schedules, and notifications. It’s visible, it immediately improves the guest experience, and it generates data that informs every subsequent decision. From there, each additional integration compounds the value.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to modernize. It’s whether you can afford not to.