Smart Segments has been a ROLLER partner for nine years, helping entertainment and leisure venues turn their data into insight, action, and revenue through analytics, AI, and custom-built solutions.
Our ROLLER Connector subscription pulls together website analytics, Google and Meta Ads, ROLLER sales and guest data, labor and cost data, and even weather. It also pushes your sales straight into NetSuite, Xero, or QuickBooks Online and lets you talk directly to your data through our Claude MCP server. From there, we help you act on it automatically: triggering an abandoned cart email in Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or HubSpot, rewarding loyal members, or reaching out before a child's birthday.
One recent shift has changed a lot of the conversations we’re having: AI. So when ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report dug into how guests discover venues and what they now expect, much of it lined up with what we see day to day. Here is how I would think about it as an operator.
Discovery is a multi-channel problem, not a search problem
ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report found that 44.3% of guests begin their research on a search engine. But that first click is rarely the whole story.
In our work with Google Analytics data, we almost never see a guest arrive once and buy. They come back three or four times before purchasing, often from completely different channels.
My own kids will see a water park on YouTube and say, "Dad, we have to go there." Months later, when we are actually planning the trip, I am the one typing the venue's name into a search engine and buying a ticket. The first touch and the last touch were nothing alike.
That is why discovery has to be treated as a multi-channel problem. You need a quality presence everywhere guests might find you, from search to TikTok to Snapchat, because that is how they discover you and how they come back.
The good news is that AI now makes this far easier to understand. You can ask it how to think about attribution, and it can point out, for example, that Facebook is not driving direct transactions but is building real brand awareness, so it deserves more investment, not less.
When AI is the first thing guests see, your information has to be right
Here is the shift I think operators most need to prepare for: the main discovery touchpoint is moving from the search engine to AI. People already ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to recommend a venue for a birthday party. Within a year, I would not be surprised if AI overtakes search as the bigger channel.
That raises the stakes on something unglamorous: data hygiene. ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report found that 82.1% of guests would use an AI-generated summary of a venue, either using it directly or checking it against the venue's own site.
The AI is pulling from your website, your listings, your reviews, and even places like Reddit and TikTok. If the underlying information is wrong or inconsistent, the summary will be wrong too, and you may never know, because the booking simply never shows up.
So make sure your hours, pricing, and activities are accurate and consistent everywhere AI might look.
Guests are adopting AI faster than most operators expect
ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report found that 54.1% of guests have already used an AI assistant to help plan or book an attraction visit, and a further 34% have not yet but are interested.
I see it everywhere: my parents use AI now, and my teenage son barely touches a search engine. A year ago, most people I mentioned ChatGPT to had not tried it. Today nearly everyone has.
Right now, guests mostly use AI for information. For example, they check your hours, pricing, and what is included in a visit. So that is exactly where to put your effort first, getting that information right so AI can find and present it correctly.
Booking through AI is coming, though. ROLLER is already rolling it out with the Guest Experience Agent, and the smart part is how it handles trust.
Most people will not read a credit card number to an AI. With the Guest Experience Agent, the booking happens through the AI conversation, then the guest gets a text message to complete payment securely. You keep it easy, and you keep the guest's trust.
The biggest back-end opportunity: insights in minutes, not weeks
The change I am most excited about is on the operational side. For years, a big part of our business was building dashboards. A client would describe what they wanted, I would tell them it would take a week and cost a certain amount, and a week later they would have it. Then they would want one more view, and that was another week.
Now, with AI tools like ROLLER iQ and Claude, an operator can simply ask: "Look at my birthday party performance this year versus last year and give me some insights." Within minutes, the insights are ready.
AI tools even suggest what to look at next, for example by breaking parties down by age group. And because tools like Klaviyo connect directly to Claude, you can go a step further and ask it to draft email campaigns and push them across, work that used to take two weeks, done in minutes.
What this really does is remove the old bottleneck. Operators have always known their data and known what they wanted to see. The limit was the technical knowledge, time, and money to get it out. AI removes that limit.
The one condition is the same as always: you need correct, complete data. Track your website properly, capture the ROLLER API data correctly, and include your cost data so you see the whole picture, not just part of it.
Speed matters, but so does the human touch
Guests now expect near-instant answers. ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report found that 43.5% of guests expect a response from a venue's chat function within seconds, and another 38.1% of guests expect it within a minute. AI is very good at meeting that bar, around the clock, without your team glued to a screen.
But this is an industry built on human interaction. The clown who made you laugh as a kid, the friendly face who hands you a coffee, that is the experience people remember, and AI should not replace it.
What AI can do is take the mundane, repetitive tasks off your team's plate so they can focus on being good humans with your guests. That matches what guests want: 84% of guests surveyed in the 2026 Pulse Report say it is very or extremely important that an AI assistant can escalate them to a real person when needed.
The way I explain AI to people is to treat it like an apprentice. It can genuinely help, but it makes mistakes, you have to teach it, and it gets better over time. It might handle 80% of a given task, but you still need a person for the other 20%. The job is to find that balance, and yes, we will all get some of it wrong before we get it right.
Building AI experiences that earn trust
Guests are right to be a little cautious. ROLLER's 2026 Pulse Report found that the biggest concern about using an AI assistant is incorrect or misleading information, at 31.3%, followed by privacy and data security at 25.6%. You earn trust by starting small, training your systems, and building in a feedback loop.
ROLLER's guest surveys are a great mechanism for this. You can use them to see how your AI is landing, then use AI itself to analyze the written feedback. If you run a big venue, no one can read every comment, but AI can summarize them into a word cloud or flag specific issues, the dirty toilets or the disappointing coffee, that are quick to fix and make a real difference to the experience.
Where this leaves operators in three years
If I look ahead, the operators who lean into AI across marketing, operations, and data insights will be well ahead of those who do not. You will reach the right audiences more precisely, spend far less to do it, and run more efficiently, which frees you to focus on the real product: the experience you create for guests.
None of this means AI replaces what you do. Radio survived television, television survived the internet, and we still enjoy all of them. AI is the same: an important new part of the mix, not a replacement. One thing is worth sitting with, though. Before long there may be more AI than humans visiting your website, so it is worth thinking now about how your venue presents itself, and reads, to both.
Want even more insights into what guests want from venues in 2026? Download your free copy of the 2026 Pulse Report today.
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