The ultimate guide to capacity planning

Carla Vianna
Carla Vianna
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The ultimate guide to capacity planning

It’s the first week of your busiest season, and the number of bookings rolling in is higher than ever before. This is great news for your attraction — until you realize you don’t have the staff or equipment to accommodate the extra guests.

With the right capacity planning tools, you can make sure your company is always ready for a change in demand. This strategic approach to planning your resources according to current and expected demand can help you run your attraction in a smart, financially efficient way.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to start capacity planning today.

What is capacity planning?

What is capacity planning?

Capacity planning is the process through which a company matches its resources against customer demand.

For an attraction, this involves measuring the performance of your current resources — staff, equipment, venue, etc. — and making sure each category is accommodating your current guest demand. For example, a company that runs wine tasting tours needs to know if it has enough tour guides and vans to accommodate the number of yours booked in a given week.

Through capacity planning, the tour operator would determine whether its current staff or fleet of vehicles is adequately meeting guest demand.

Why is it important for tourism/travel brands? 

Tour companies and attractions often face all kinds of fluctuations in current demand. The difference between an attraction that has effective capacity planning and one that doesn’t is that the latter won’t be prepared for these changes.

When you’re consistently tracking your resource utilization, you’ll know what adjustments will need to be made in order to accommodate a rise or dip in booking volume.

Moreover, tourism brands can benefit from capacity planning in the following ways:

  • Know when to hire a new guide. You can forecast future demand fluctuations to better understand when you’ll need excess capacity in the form of additional equipment or new team members.  
  • Avoid bottlenecks. What if a tour guide miscalculates their availability or takes a sick day? Without a good plan in place, these scenarios can cause tour delays and even cancellations — something your guests won’t be too happy about. Capacity planning will give human resources (HR) an accurate view of employees’ working hours so that they never overbook someone. It also makes it easy to reassign a new guide to cover for someone who is out sick.
  • Never overbook your tours or run out of equipment again. Your capacity planning will give you a detailed view of your resource availability.  If you run a pedal pub tour, for example, you may have several of them booked at once. It can be easy to overbook a pedal pub without the proper capacity planning. 
  • Monitor utilization rates. You’ll be able to measure your team’s capacity in anticipation based on current demand and booking volume. This will give you a more realistic view of your business. 
  • Understand growth opportunities. Planning capacity can help your company determine whether it has the bandwidth to take on new projects — such as expanding into a new market, opening a new venue, or growing your tour listings. 

What’s the difference between capacity planning and capacity management? 

If capacity planning helps an attraction figure out if it has enough resources to meet guest demand, then capacity management is the process of putting this information to work.

Capacity management specifically refers to the way you manage your available resources.

Once you’ve gone through your capacity planning, you’ll have the information needed to ensure that your attraction maximizes its potential output at all times. For example, if your bookings are suddenly soaring, you’d hire a couple of new guides to reel in the extra revenue. Or if you notice that a particular guide is overworked and negatively impacting the rest of your team’s workflow, you’d adjust your team’s hours.

What’s the difference between capacity planning and resource planning? 

Capacity planning will help you evaluate if your current resources can meet existing customer demand. It’ll also provide a roadmap for what you need to do to accommodate anticipated guest demand.

Once you have this information, you can move on to scheduling your guides in a way that makes the most sense. That is called resource planning, or the practice of allocating resources in the most efficient way possible.

The resource planning process focuses on effectively managing your employees, available work hours, and equipment to cover all of your bookings.

Let’s see how this might play out in real life. A kayaking tour operator’s busiest time of the year is during the summer months of June and July. The tour operator will use capacity planning to find out if its current resources — tour guides and kayaks — are enough to meet the expected demand next summer. 

The business soon figures out that it needs to hire an additional guide.

Once that’s done, the tour operator will use resource planning to schedule its guides and manage its kayak inventory in the most efficient way possible.

What’s the difference between capacity planning and project management?  

While capacity planning is a component of project management that specifically deals with resource availability, project management is a more comprehensive process that includes capacity and project planning as one of its many functions.

  • Capacity Planning focuses on ensuring that the right resources (like staff, equipment, and facilities) are available to meet current and future demand. In the context of tours and attractions, this might involve determining how many tour guides, vehicles, or tickets are needed for an upcoming season based on anticipated visitor numbers. The goal is to balance supply with demand, optimize resource use, and avoid over- or under-utilization.
  • Project Management, on the other hand, is a broader discipline that involves planning, executing, and closing projects. It encompasses setting project goals, timelines, budgets, and managing the various tasks and stakeholders involved. For a tour or attraction, project management might cover the launch of a new exhibit, the rollout of a marketing campaign, or the construction of a new ride. It involves not only resource allocation (as in capacity planning) but also coordination, risk management, and quality control to ensure that the project is completed on time, within budget, and to the required standard.

What’s the difference between capacity planning and operations management? 

While capacity planning is a specific aspect of operations management focused on resource availability, operations management covers a much wider scope, including the overall efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. 

  • Capacity Planning is the process of determining the resources needed to meet future demand. It involves forecasting, assessing current capabilities, and ensuring that you have the right amount of staff, equipment, and facilities to handle peak seasons or unexpected surges in visitors. For a tour company or attraction, this might mean ensuring you have enough tour guides and vehicles during the summer holidays when visitor numbers are at their highest.
  • Operations Management, on the other hand, is a broader discipline that involves overseeing, designing, and controlling the production process and day-to-day activities of the organization. It encompasses everything from resource management (which includes capacity planning) to process optimization, quality control, and logistics. In a tourism context, operations management might involve managing the daily schedules of tours, maintaining equipment, handling customer service, and ensuring that every aspect of the business runs smoothly and efficiently.

Both are critical to ensuring that tours and attractions can meet customer demand while maintaining high standards of service.

Types of strategic capacity planning 

When planning around your current capacity, it’s essential to understand the different types of capacity planning to ensure smooth operations and a great visitor experience. Workforce, product, and tool capacity planning each plays a crucial role in preparing for and managing the actual demands of a busy season.

Here’s a quick look at how each type can be applied in a larger setting.

  • Workforce Capacity Planning – involves ensuring that you have the right number of staff to meet customer demand. For example, a large theme park might use workforce capacity planning to determine how many seasonal employees to hire during peak summer months to manage increased visitor traffic effectively.
  • Product Capacity Planning focuses on ensuring that the necessary products or services are available to meet demand. In the context of a larger attraction, this might involve a zoo assessing whether it has enough souvenir stock, like branded merchandise, to handle the influx of visitors during a popular holiday weekend.
  • Tool Capacity Planning – involves ensuring that all necessary equipment and tools are available and functioning to meet operational needs. For a large water park, this might mean planning for the availability and maintenance of all water slides and filtration systems to handle the surge in visitors during the hottest part of the year.

5 methods of capacity planning

  • Agile method: An approach to project management in which your team works in small increments characterized by rapid production and constant revision. In terms of capacity planning, this allows a team to determine how many productive hours are available for the upcoming work cycle. Then, your attraction can confidently commit to reaching whatever your objective within that time frame.
  • Traditional method: This capacity planning strategy completes the strategic planning process at once, leaving little room for future demand increases. It assumes that time and cost are variables and requirements are fixed.
  • Lag strategy: The lag method stretches your resource capacity to its full potential before investing in new resources like staff or equipment.
  • Lead strategy: The lead method is a more aggressive approach to capacity planning. It involves making an upfront investment in more sources based on the assumption that your booking volume will increase.
  • Match strategy: With the match method, your attraction would make small changes in capacity based on real-time demand.

How to build out your capacity plan

Every company will approach capacity planning in the way that works best for them. Overall, though, most processes share a few core steps.

1. Identify the key resources that need to be measured

For an attraction, this typically includes staff, available working hours, equipment, and venue space. An axe throwing attraction, for example, will measure the capacity of its axe throwing lanes and coaches. A food tour company, on the other hand, would focus on employee schedules to ensure there are enough tour guides and time to accommodate guest demand.

2. Measure the resource capacity of your current team

In this step, you’ll determine how many tours or bookings your company can handle with its current setup.

For the axe throwing company, this would involve looking at the capacity utilization of its lanes and coaches. When the company knows how often its lanes are being used compared to how often they’re available, it’ll have a better idea if its current space is meeting guest demand. The same goes for its coaches. If the company’s lanes are at 100% capacity, then it might be time to add more time slots or new lanes.

One way to measure capacity is to run a capacity utilization report through Xola. The report can bring you valuable insight like show you which of your tours or time slots are most profitable.

3. Forecast anticipated demand and determine your new capacity requirements

A crucial part of capacity planning is to forecast changes in demand. A food tour operator could use predictive analytics to estimate that demand will go up 25% during the busy summer months.

Now the company must find out if its current staff, equipment, and/or space will be able to meet that anticipated guest demand. If the company is already operating at or near 100%, then it likely won’t be able to take on the additional demand.

This is why it’s important to always have a good understanding of your attraction’s existing capacity.

4. Match capacity with expected demand

Once you’ve done your capacity analysis, you can put this information into action. You’ll quickly know if you have enough resources to meet the anticipated demand.

If you need an additional tour guide to accommodate an expected influx of guests, then you can start making plans to hire one. On the other hand, if you notice that you have an excess of resources, you can brainstorm ways to take on new projects to maximize the staff and equipment you have available.

3 capacity planning examples for tours and attractions 

Here are three examples of capacity planning for tours and attractions:

Seasonal staffing 

A kayaking tour operator experiences peak demand during the summer months of June and July. By using capacity planning, the operator evaluates if the current number of tour guides and kayaks can meet the expected demand. They discover they need to hire an additional guide and acquire more kayaks. With this information, they schedule guides and manage kayak inventory efficiently, ensuring they can handle the influx of customers without overbooking or underutilizing resources​. 

Managing ride availability 

A theme park anticipates higher visitor numbers during school vacations and holiday weekends. Through capacity planning, the park assesses if its rides and attractions can accommodate the surge in visitors. They determine that additional seasonal staff and extended ride hours are necessary to prevent long wait times and enhance the guest experience. By implementing these changes, the park maintains optimal ride availability and improves customer satisfaction during peak periods​. 

Optimizing tours for a historical site

A historical site offering guided tours uses capacity planning to match tour schedules with visitor demand. During off-peak seasons, they may reduce the number of daily tours to avoid overstaffing. Conversely, during peak tourist seasons, they increase the number of tours and hire additional guides. This approach ensures that resources are allocated efficiently, reducing operational costs and ensuring a smooth visitor experience regardless of the season​. 

Capacity planning best practices 

 Here are some best practices to help you get started.

  • Use historical data and market trends to predict future demand accurately. This helps in making informed decisions about resource allocation.
  • Evaluate your current resources, including staff, equipment, and facilities, to ensure they can meet anticipated demand.
  • Develop scalable plans that can be adjusted for both short-term and long-term demand fluctuations. This flexibility allows you to respond quickly to changes in customer demand.
  • Track the utilization rates of your resources in real-time. This helps in identifying underutilized or overburdened resources and making necessary adjustments.
  • Conduct scenario analyses to prepare for various demand situations. This involves creating different scenarios (e.g., peak season, off-peak season) and planning resources accordingly.
  • Ensure employees are cross-trained to handle multiple roles. This adds flexibility in resource allocation and helps manage unexpected absences or surges in demand.
  • Use advanced scheduling and capacity planning tools – many booking software, like Xola, have this built-in, to automate and optimize resource allocation. These tools provide insights into capacity constraints and help streamline operations.
  • Implement feedback loops to continuously improve capacity planning processes. Collect data on performance and use it to refine forecasting and resource allocation strategies.
  • Foster clear communication and collaboration across all departments involved in capacity planning. This ensures everyone is aligned and can respond effectively to capacity challenges.
  •  Identify potential risks related to capacity and develop mitigation strategies. This includes having contingency plans for equipment failures, staff shortages, and unexpected demand spikes.

Should you invest in capacity planning software? 

Your company should never have to guess whether it has the right number of tour guides or equipment to run your tours. With the right capacity planning processes in place, you’ll be one step ahead of the curve.

Investing in capacity planning software can streamline this entire process, providing real-time data and insights that manual methods simply can’t match. This software helps you forecast demand, allocate resources efficiently, and avoid the costly mistakes of overbooking or underutilizing your assets. Best part, powerful booking software usually comes equipped with many of these features. 

For larger tours and attractions, where the stakes are high and the variables are many, capacity planning is not just a nice-to-have—it’s an essential tool for maintaining operational excellence and delivering a seamless guest experience. By adopting the right technology, you’ll gain the agility to adapt to demand changes swiftly, optimize your resources, and, ultimately, enhance your bottom line.

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Writer Carla Vianna

Carla Vianna

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