Have you ever shopped for a new bike? I have. And one of the first things I learned was Bontrager’s maxim: Light, strong, cheap—pick two.
Keith Bontrager was a bike shop owner who knew a thing or two. Sure, you can have a bike that’s light and strong, but it won’t be cheap. You can have a bike that’s cheap and strong, but it won’t be light. And so on. Physics doesn’t negotiate.
That maxim has been rattling around in my head for years, because it maps uncomfortably well onto how we plan and evaluate visitor experiences.
I’ve written before about evaluation metrics for interpretive programs and other visitor experience products. Over the years, we’ve tracked all kinds of measures: partner satisfaction, visitor learning and understanding, visitor feedback, attendance figures, revenue earned. But three metrics in particular tend to cause friction—especially when priorities aren’t clear.
I’ll call them reach, resonance, and revenue.
Reach is straightforward: the number of people contacted through a program.
Resonance is a bit squishier, but more important: the program’s testable impact on the visitor—learning and understanding, memorability, enjoyment, satisfaction, and feelings of connection to place. Impact might be the better word, but dammit, it doesn’t start with R.
Revenue is earned income—the extent to which a program helps pay for itself, or for other work.
Here’s the thing. I’ve spent a long time trying to design programs, events, and exhibitions that nail all three. And in my experience, that combination is a bit of a unicorn. You can sometimes get close, but most of the time you’re lucky if you get two.
I think it’s time we’re more honest about that—with ourselves and with our bosses. You can usually have two. And that’s okay. You just need to be strategic about which two you need from a given program.
Managers tend to love high-reach programs. Big special events that attract hundreds—or thousands—of people and give them a taste of the place, the history, the themes. And to be fair, there’s something genuinely satisfying about seeing a site full of people, especially if you’re reaching new or elusive audiences.
But if you care deeply about connection to place, you also know that the depth of that “taste” is often… limited. High-reach programs can be fun and worthwhile, but they rarely go deep.
I’m reminded of an outreach product an old employer rolled out at festivals and public events: the temporary tattoo. Yes, it was visually connected to the site’s history, broadly. Yes, it technically had an interpretive theme—though calling it that might be stretching a Chiclet to the moon. People lined up, got their tattoo, and moved on. That was the entire visitor experience product.
Some managers loved it. Massive reach. Clear numbers. Easy wins. I thought it fell well short of its potential.
As a bona fide content connoisseur (which is a much nicer name than snob), my heart belongs to high-resonance programs. The ones where we really invest our creativity and energy to create something memorable: a visit from an Elder who takes time with a story; a guided hike up a mountainside; a family-friendly interpretive theatre program. When these are done well, they land. People remember them months later.
But let’s be honest: they cost a bomb. I’ve done the math. I’ve built the spreadsheets. High-resonance programs are labour-intensive, skill-dependent, and expensive to develop and deliver. They’re worth it—but they’re not cheap.
Now let’s bring revenue into the picture.
If revenue matters to your agency—and the clearest trend I’ve seen over the last 15 years is that it matters more every year—you start making different choices. Take a high-reach event and add a suggested donation at the gate. With a 2,000-person event, that can generate real money. Reach and revenue: you’ve picked two.
Or take that high-resonance guided hike. Add a few gourmet snacks, limit the group size, and charge $60 per person. In the right market, that can work beautifully. High resonance, high revenue—if you run it successfully over a few seasons and earn back the development costs. Reach? Not so much. But that’s ok: you’ve picked resonance and revenue.
Now let’s look at a tough one: resonance AND reach. Big blockbuster exhibitions—think Van Gogh—can pull it off. High-impact interpretive shows can, too. Some of the work we did at Vancouver Aquarium could blow 400 minds at a sitting. But cheap? Nope. Nope nope nope.
So yes, it’s time to educate our bosses about the “pick two” reality: reach, resonance, revenue—pick two.
Here’s the part that actually excites me.
Any single program is just one element in a curated portfolio for a given site, season, and audience. That’s where planning gets interesting. We decide what really matters this year, and we design a mix of programs that balance reach, resonance, and revenue across the whole system.
Got a sensitive natural area with low carrying capacity? That points toward high-resonance, high-revenue, very low-reach programs. Trying to build a relationship with a new demographic? Invest in high reach and high resonance—and accept the financial hit for a season. Need high numbers to impress a VP? Throw a big public event with a local band, food trucks, and genuinely fun programming—and see if you can either make a little money or create meaningful moments of connection.
And across this portfolio of VE products, look at the interplay of reach, resonance, and revenue. Balance it. Align it with your strategic plan, your management plan, your target markets’ needs and interests. Align it with what your destination management organization or chamber of commerce is trying to accomplish. Align it with your staff’s strengths and passions.
This is what excites me as a planner heading into 2026: helping parks, historic sites, museums, and other heritage destinations be explicit, mindful, and strategic about their choices. Picking two at a time. Curating a portfolio of visitor experience products that actually hits the mark—strategically, financially, and emotionally.
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