Trips & Treats Attitudes

Arts and culture engagement is largely determined by children's interests and educational requirements, value for money, and the need to guarantee good family fun.

Priorities

This group is led by their children’s interests, strongly influenced by friends and family, and enjoys arts and culture for social and educational reasons.

• Family outings, including for special occasions, are reasonably frequent, so an accessible package or activity that offers a guaranteed family day or night out is what they are seeking.
• At the younger end, the atmosphere needs to be family friendly, whilst at the older end the environment would need space and opportunities for socialising – whether in a bar, restaurant, foyer or outside area.
• Depending on how confident they are feeling, some may take small risks, but they are most likely to go with what they know, or seek to mitigate risk by drawing on a range of easy-to-access and trusted information sources.
• Good relations and repeat visits will rely on a high level of customer service, guaranteed fun, and attention to the whole experience - get this right and there is potential for loyalty to a particular organisation, venue or activity.

Spending

While able to afford a premium price on occasion, this group still prioritises value for money, and they are always on the look out for a good deal.

• Family tickets (accommodating a range of family structures) will be particularly welcomed, as well as access to time-limited or programme-specific discounts.
• The additional costs of a family outing should also be considered (i.e. food and drink) and built transparently into planning information and pricing, including child-friendly menu choices, opportunity to bring their own picnic, etc.
• Younger families will actually expect free, or very low costs for, local activities.
• If family activities do carry a cost, it is important to be clear about what they will get included - e.g. making something to take home, professionally-led activities etc.
• Pocket-money ranges in onsite shops may encourage secondary spend.

Philanthropy

If they consider the local arts offer worth supporting, this group is moderately likely to donate, and mostly gives to museums, galleries or heritage.

• In the past 12 months, 32% have donated between £20 and £99; 5% donated to arts, 13% to heritage, and 15% to museums and galleries.
• Interestingly though, the higher value donations actually go to arts and heritage, while museum giving is more common, but at a lower level.
• This group may consider themselves as potential givers for the right offer and benefits, so nurturing those already giving may be effective to understand what their individual motivations might be.
• Otherwise they may also respond well to one-off appeals for particular projects that are relevant to families, or which enhance their local offer.

Cost-of-living concerns

With return attendance surpassing pre-Covid-19 levels and concerns about cost-of-living falling in the middle range, Trips and Treats are still likely to reliably engage with live arts and culture for special occasions, even through this crisis.

Unlike most segments, this group are slightly more worried about energy cost changes (31% strongly agree it will affect cultural spending) than the other issues asked about, inflation and interest rates. This segment has a lot of families, and families have higher energy costs, so this may be why energy is the biggest worry, but if energy costs fall this will decrease the level of impact on family finances.