Great Wolf Resorts’ top priority is the safety of its guests and employees. Their 19 Great Wolf Lodges in North America cater to families with kids 2-to-12 years old. Each resort has an indoor waterpark, family-friendly attractions, entertainment experiences, and much more. Safety is extremely important when you host hundreds of families at each resort, which is why Great Wolf Resorts incorporates it into every aspect of their operation.
As the world started to recognize the risks of COVID-19, Great Wolf Resorts decided to temporarily shut down their resorts across the U.S. in mid-March to ensure the safety of its guests and employees due to escalating uncertainty and the resulting rapidly evolving environment. As the risk factors for COVID-19 transmission became clearer, the company began developing a reopening strategy. Their established guiding principles for reopening with a plan that facilitated a safe guest and employee experience. Hence, Great Wolf Resorts engaged Chainalytics’ Supply Chain Operations team to collaboratively focus on two essential areas of the reopening plan: (1) determining the maximum safe occupancy of the resort and (2) ensuring social distancing while minimizing surface contacts. The safety program we helped develop was dubbed the “Paw Pledge.”
Building and implementing the Paw Pledge playbook
Modeling capacity of attractions, outlets, and conference rooms
With the waterpark being the largest guest attraction, our first task was to calculate new capacities for every ride and activity in the waterpark that reflected practical physical distancing for guests and employees. We created a simulation model incorporating social distancing rules, ride dwell times, popularity and usage, guest family sizes, age restrictions, and hours of operation. Taking into account the square footage of pools, decks, play areas, and walkways, the model helped us determine the maximum capacities. Then we ran various scenarios to identify bottlenecks and arrive at recommended capacity limits. By repeating a similar process for all other attractions, food and beverage outlets, conference rooms, and common areas, we established capacity limits for the entire resort that created confidence in operating while maintaining physical distancing among guests and employees. Detailed modeling also enabled their resort operations teams to enforce and educate guests on social distancing.
Mapping the steps of the guest journey
With the resorts shut down, resort management teams actively collaborated with us as we employed industrial engineering techniques, including time and motion studies, to simulate the guest journey. Detailed mapping was essential to understanding which processes required a redesign to manage “socially-distanced” guest traffic patterns while maintaining a positive experience. Process mapping also identified the right number and placement of sanitizers, wipes, masks, gloves, plexiglass dividers, signage, and decals throughout the resort. And with access to existing engineering resort layouts, we were able to design the appropriate journey for guests without visiting all the lodges.
Redesigning employee operations
Optimizing employee operations is not only a health and safety issue; it’s vital for keeping the morale high for all staff. Like guest process mapping, we completed a “back of the house” operations review to recommend changes. Detailed activity mapping identified surface contacts for sanitization focus (e.g., biometric logins, key kiosks, etc.) and areas for employee and guest gatherings. The operations team carefully addressed each of these risks before reopening. Working with resort operations, we designed and implemented a pre-shift temperature screening and tracking process.
Formulating a scalable reopening process
After determining all process and layout changes and capacity limits, we created a reopening playbook for Great Wolf Resorts. Given ongoing uncertainty around reopening dates, it was vital to develop flexible, easy to implement, and – most importantly – scalable processes. We created a day-to-day reopening activity plan, a detailed checklist, and modular training schedules. After the successful reopening of the first resort, in which they closely followed the prescribed processes and documentation, the path for reopening other lodges was clear and repeatable.
Tracking and predicting occupancy after reopening
It is one thing to establish capacity, and another to monitor it. The Paw Pledge called for constant monitoring and quick implementation of changes, ensuring a continuously safe environment. Resorts were already equipped with real-time cameras to count people in different areas. We created a tracking dashboard to compare the people count with capacity limits at different times of the day for every resort. With enough days of data, the tracking model also predicted crowd sizes considering occupancy of previous nights. This capability helped the resort teams to better plan day-to-day operations.
With detailed procedures and lowered occupancy limits, Great Wolf Resorts successfully obtained reopening approvals from multiple state and local authorities. About 70% of their lodges reopened by June 30. Real-time occupancy tracking shows that their attractions are maintained within capacity limits, helping them plan activities to maintain consistent social distancing. Occupancy tracking analytics also show that most of the reopened resorts can increase occupancy while still adhering to social distancing standards. These new tools help Great Wolf Resorts decide whether to increase or decrease occupancy at any given lodge. And as the company deliberates every decision there is, as always, one overriding consideration — the safety of guests and staff.
Reopening your facilities after COVID-19 can require detailed analysis and modeling to ensure the safety of your customers and adherence to local and state guidelines. Chainalytics’ combination of top supply chain talent, proven methodologies, and exclusive market intelligence consistently puts our clients ahead of the curve. Reach out if we can help you get your business safely back on track.
