Trentham Monkey Forest goes digital with new visitor experience software

Global attraction experience software specialists n-gage.io has announced a new contract with Trentham Monkey Forest, who have launched their mobile app and attraction management software at the Stoke-on-Trent site, aimed at enhancing their visitor experience.

Trentham Monkey Forest is located in ancient Staffordshire woodland on the Trentham Estate and is home to 140 free-roaming Barbary macaques.

The Monkey Forest is the UK’s largest primate enclosure where the public are left free to roam amongst the Monkeys to observe their natural behaviour. Opened to the public in 2005 after two groups of macaques were relocated from sister sites in Europe, Trentham Monkey Forest work closely with organisations such as PSGB (Primate Society of Great Britain), and BMAC (Barbary macaque Awareness and Conservation) to raise conservation awareness as Barbary macaques are now classed as a highly endangered species with less than 8,000 said to be left in the wild.

The wider Trentham Estate, on which the Forest is situated, welcomes over 3 million visitors annually, and the Monkey Forest has just unveiled the new visitor experience mobile app to help improve conservation education, navigation, and interactive engagement at their 60-acre site.

With a total of four sites across the UK and Europe, around 80% of what is known about this primate is from scientific studies conducted by the group. Given the organisations reputation for promoting conservation education, the team at Trentham Monkey Forest engaged attraction experience specialists at n-gage.io to explore how mobile technology could play a wider part in their visitor engagement strategy whilst also introducing a host of interactive features in a new mobile app to enhance the Monkey Forest visitor experience for both young and old alike.

The n-gage.io solution pairs the SaaS platform's highly customisable visitor mobile app with its powerful attraction management software to deliver the Monkey Forest team both the tools and data insights it needs to enhance the visitor experience and deepen engagement with them in real-time.

Trentham Monkey Forest now plans to use the app as a focal point for its forest visitors, to provide even more rich content and media on the Barbary macaque species, whilst also understanding more about the natural flora and fauna that can be found throughout the forest. Visitors benefit from the impact of improved navigation, finding their way around the forest and other points of interest using the app’s wayfinding solution. The team have also introduced several new digital trails using the software’s innovative trails builder feature, to facilitate interactive trails across the forest, opening it up for even more exploration.

The team also plan to use the app to keep forest visitors up to date with details of their latest campaigns, conservation activity and event programmes. Meanwhile, the marketing team make use of valuable data insights to refine marketing campaigns and drive the conservation agenda through targeted and personalised in-app messaging.

"We're excited to launch our new Trentham Monkey Forest App and offer our visitors and an enhanced digital experience"; said Lisa Wardell, Park Manager at Trentham Monkey Forest. "We’re hoping to use our experiences to introduce the technology for consideration at our parent sites across Europe, helping even more of our visitors to get interactive whilst understanding more about this highly endangered species.”

She continues, “The team at n-gage.io has developed a software platform and highly customisable mobile visitor app that is cost effective to deploy and requires no technical expertise to manage. The technology will certainly help us to enhance the on-site visitor experience and deepen engagement.”

"We're thrilled to be supporting the work of Trentham Monkey Forest at this unique site.” said Bryan Hoare CEO of n-gage.io. "The Group are renowned for their work in highlighting the conservation of these fabulous primates, and it’s great to know our technology is playing a role in helping to raise further awareness, whilst giving the team the tools to capture valuable visitor data insights to help improve their operations.”