Winner

Avius, a provider of real-time customer experience solutions, has partnered with the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) for the past five years, enabling the association to collect real-time feedback immediately after educational sessions at its trade events.

Each year, IAAPA hosts major trade events worldwide, bringing thousands of attractions professionals together to learn, network, and discover industry innovations.

IAAPA's education programme for its Expos features hundreds of sessions over multiple days and stages on topics like guest experience, operations, leadership, technology, and new industry trends.

The IAAPA team collaborates with volunteers and industry experts globally to identify key topics and create programmes that provide value to attendees.

Understanding what audiences want

Given the significant investment in the education programme, it's essential to understand what truly connects with attendees. The best time to request feedback is while participants are still present, so their recollections are fresh; once they leave, details tend to fade.

Previously, IAAPA relied on paper evaluations, which encouraged strong participation but demanded considerable time and manual processing. Later, IAAPA introduced QR code surveys, but response rates fell short of expectations. As session popularity grew, IAAPA required a solution that could gather quick, accurate feedback at scale.

Over the past five years, it has collaborated with Avius to gather real-time feedback right after sessions.

With Avius' intuitive smiley-face feedback system, attendees can quickly share their opinions before leaving, giving IAAPA immediate insights into session effectiveness, speaker ratings, and future content directions.

Participation rates exceeded those of previous paper-based methods; more than 10,000 survey responses were collected during IAAPA Expo US 2025 alone.

Additionally, the IAAPA team has immediate access to attendee ratings and comments, and can use these insights to benchmark performance and shape future programmes.

Real impact

Avius collaborates with IAAPA's event ambassadors, offering training on the right timing and approach to engage attendees without disrupting the session or the flow of exiting participants. The goal is to allow attendees enough time to think, share opinions, and rate both the session and speaker before moving on.

Avius' system is designed to make it easy for IAAPA Expo attendees to give feedback immediately

Internally, the survey system also aligns with the event schedule. Surveys automatically switch between sessions, topics, and speakers throughout the day, ensuring feedback stays relevant to the current presentation without manual adjustments.

This effective mix of trained ambassadors and intelligent automation has helped IAAPA consistently secure high participation and valuable feedback at scale.

In-the-moment feedback has become an important component of IAAPA's ongoing improvement efforts.

This data helps the team identify the topics that generate the most engagement, determine which sessions and formats offer the greatest value, understand what attendees wish to learn about in the future, and recognise the speakers who have made the biggest impact on their audiences.

Feedback is just as important for the speakers. Each presenter dedicates a lot of time and skill to their session and wants to know whether they've truly offered value to the audience. Real-time feedback gives that insight, showing speakers what clicked and how they can improve future presentations.

Avius offers training on the right timing and approach to engage attendees without disruption

Collecting feedback immediately helps IAAPA enhance its educational offerings year after year, keeping them relevant, engaging, and meaningful for the global attractions industry.

Sean Bonner, senior director of global expos education and program management at IAAPA, says: “When we partnered with Avius, we saw our participation actually exceed how it was done on paper... We use this information, bring it all together, and send it back to our committees to create the foundation for future programmes to come.”

Earlier this year, Avius shared details of how it has worked with Whipsnade Zoo, part of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), to deploy a strategic, data-led approach for gathering feedback.