Minnesota Zoo

Guest Experience Study

In a Nutshell...

A Different View was retained to deliver a Guest Experience Study for the Minnesota Zoo. Located in Apple Valley, the Minnesota Zoo spans 485 acres, welcomes well over a million visitors annually, and is one of only two state-supported zoos in the United States. Guided by its mission to connect people, animals and the natural world to save wildlife, the Zoo engaged A Different View to help elevate the guest experience with an evidence-based approach and subsequently, develop a guest experience strategic plan for the future.

This included:

· Comprehensive guest research and assessment

· Observational and behavioral studies

· Social media listening analysis

· An overarching storyline narrative creation

· A guest experience strategic plan

This multi-layered approach gave the Minnesota Zoo a rigorous, data-driven foundation for shaping its future guest experience — one the leadership team could act on with confidence.

Project overview

The Minnesota Zoo called on A Different View to help ensure guest experience sat at the heart of its long-term planning, rather than as an afterthought to capital and conservation priorities. Over the course of a year-long engagement, our team partnered closely with the Zoo's leadership, education, and guest services teams to build a shared, evidence-based understanding of who the Zoo's guests are, what they need, and how the Zoo can grow to meet them.

We began with a series of collaborative workshops with Zoo leadership to align on mission-driven outcomes, operational realities, physical site constraints, and the Zoo's ambitions for future growth. From there, our work moved through three connected phases: guest research and assessment, storyline narrative development, and a guest experience strategic plan.

Guest Research and Assessment

We undertook comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research, including guest surveys, observational studies, and on-site assessment of the visitor journey. This work identified guests' motivations for visiting, their peak experiences and pain points, gaps in the current guest journey, dwell time patterns, and how different guest segments engage with the Zoo's exhibits, programming, and conservation mission. The result was a rigorous, real-evidence picture of the Zoo experience as guests actually experienced it. In the end, guest personas were created from the data that included understanding motivations and values for each persona, experience

expectations and drivers to repeat visitation, likes and dislikes, which resulted in solid recommendations for each persona.

Storyline Narrative

Building on the research, A Different View developed an overarching storyline narrative for the Zoo — a unifying framework connecting the guest journey, the Zoo's conservation mission, and its physical spaces into one coherent story. This narrative gives the Zoo a consistent lens for evaluating future exhibits, programming, and capital investments against a single guest-centered vision.

Guest Experience Strategic Plan

Finally, we translated the research and narrative into a guest experience strategic plan: a practical, prioritized roadmap the Zoo's leadership can use to guide decision-making across future development, operations, and guest-facing initiatives. This plan gives the Minnesota Zoo the ability to make evidence-based decisions with confidence as it plans for continued growth.

Client Quote:

"Over the course of a year-long engagement, A Different View fundamentally transformed how the Minnesota Zoo thinks about guest experience and its place in our planning. Sylvia and her team delivered rigorous, data-driven work—from comprehensive guest research and assessment to an overarching storyline narrative and guest experience strategic plan—that has elevated guest experience to a central consideration in how we shape the Zoo's future. The insights were consistently informative and grounded in real evidence, giving us a foundation we could actually act on. Beyond the quality of the work, the team was an absolute delight to partner with: timely, professional, and skilled at operating as both expert consultant and trusted advisor."

— Jamie Flaws, Executive Director, Minnesota Zoo Foundation

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What we did -

Research & Evaluation

Sector -

Zoos and aquariums

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