By Terry Terzioski, National Guest Experience Solutions Manager.

In today’s fast paced environment, guest expectations continue to evolve rapidly and businesses that deliver consistent and genuinely human guest experiences will be better positioned to thrive. 

Across the broader customer experience industry, there is a clear shift towards making the guest journey as seamless as possible, which, of course, has a direct impact on critical factors that move the dial for a company: guest satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.  

Since late 2024, when Belgravia Leisure shared how technology was helping transform the guest experience across the organisation, that journey has accelerated to where we are today. We’ve placed a growing focus on connected systems, safe unified customer data, operational consistency and balancing innovation with genuine human connection. 

To understand where we are now, it’s important to reflect on where we started. 

Just seven years ago, the company operated in a predominantly face-to-face service model. This often brought challenges such as lengthy wait times, competing operational demands and inconsistent service.  

As our network of venues continued to grow across Australia and New Zealand, so too did the complexity of managing guest interactions at scale. Traditionally, our venue teams balanced multiple responsibilities simultaneously: supporting walk-in guests, answering phones, managing memberships, handling administrative tasks and responding to operational demands in real time. 

While our people consistently delivered exceptional service, the reality was that competing priorities could sometimes limit the opportunity for deeper connection and more personalised guest experiences. 

Then, just a few short years ago, the business started the move into using AI as a tool to assist with faster, more personalised interactions, allowing our Guest Experience Officers to prioritise important in-person interactions. And even early on, we could see this approach was working with increased sales, higher Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and improved team member engagement. 

Today, what was once an often a disjointed guest experience, has been transformed into a more connected, omnichannel ecosystem. This system is designed to improve accessibility and create more meaningful interactions for both guests and teams.  

In 2026, the Belgravia Leisure Contact Centre will process more than one million guest interactions. By centralising our support and streamlining repetitive enquiries, venue teams can now spend more time building genuine relationships with guests and creating positive experiences. This has strengthened performance across key customer experience measures, including customer satisfaction, response times and accessibility.  

This approach of progressively evolving our guest experience strategy through the establishment and growth of our Contact Centre operations, omnichannel engagement pathways and a broader Customer Experience Digital Optimisation Program was a critical one if the business was to continue to operate as a market leader. 

The transformation journey was never simply about introducing more technology or creating efficiency for efficiency’s sake; it was about creating better experiences by removing friction for both guests and teams. 

Delivering our Guest First Strategy at scale 

As this transformation has continued to evolve, one thing has remained constant – Belgravia Leisure’s Guest First Strategy. Because delivering service is one thing, but delivering a genuine experience is another. 

As interaction volumes grow, maintaining consistency and quality across every guest interaction has become critical. To support this next phase of maturity and consistency at scale, Belgravia Leisure has introduced a new Quality Assurance Framework across the Contact Centre. 

Importantly, this framework is not just a performance tool. It is designed to support coaching, capability development and continuous improvement. It reinforces Guest First principles in every interaction, measuring not only operational outcomes but also the human elements of service, including empathy, active listening and professionalism. 

This balance between operational excellence and genuine human connection continues to support Contact Centre Mystery Shop performance outcomes averaging above 90%, while helping our teams confidently manage increasing guest demand across the network. At its core, the framework recognises that quality customer experience is ultimately built through people. 

Reframing Guest Experience Through Connected Data and Intelligent Support 

In today’s experience economy, guest expectations are no longer shaped by individual interactions – they are shaped by the consistency and continuity of every interaction across the entire journey. This is where Belgravia Leisure’s Customer Experience (CX) Digital Optimisation program is fundamentally changing the game.  

By establishing a true Single Customer View (SCV) and augmenting it with intelligent Voice AI, we are shifting from fragmented service delivery to connected, guest-centric engagement. 

At its core, the SCV creates a unified, real-time profile of each customer by consolidating data across bookings, enquiries, memberships and communications into a single source of truth. These systems  ensure that no matter whether a guest is interacting with marketing, the contact centre or a venue team, they are recognised, understood and served consistently. The outcome is not just operational efficiency, it is a more personal and seamless guest experience.  

However, data alone does not create great experiences. The real transformation happens when this foundation is combined with intelligent automation that supports, rather than replaces, human capability. 

Voice AI exemplifies this shift. As demonstrated in our pilot across select BPro parks, Voice AI is designed to act as the first point of contact – answering enquiries, guiding bookings, and removing wait times for our guests. But importantly, it is not positioned as a replacement for human interaction. Instead, it captures intent early, handles high-volume, repeatable tasks and escalates seamlessly when nuance, empathy or judgement is required.  

This is the essence of a human-in-the-loop model. 

By taking care of routine interactions, AI reduces cognitive load on team members and allows them to focus on the moments that matter most – complex enquiries, emotional interactions and creating memorable guest experiences. In parallel, SCV ensures that when those handovers occur, staff have full context at their fingertips, enabling faster resolution and more meaningful conversations. 

The result is a powerful symbiosis: guests benefit from faster, more consistent service with no loss of personalisation. 

• Team members are empowered with better insights and freed from repetitive work 
• The organisation achieves scalable, high-quality experience delivery 

Ultimately, the future of guest experience will not be defined by how much technology is introduced, but by how effectively it is integrated to support people. By anchoring innovation in a strong SCV foundation and applying Voice AI in a controlled, human-centric way, the CX program is setting a clear direction -one where technology works quietly in the background, enabling teams to deliver the kind of service that guests remember. 

Whether through connected systems, guest first principles, quality frameworks, unified customer data or emerging AI capabilities, the goal remains the same: strengthening guest centricity by creating seamless, trusted and meaningful guest experiences at scale. 

Because the future of guest experience won’t be defined by technology alone, but by how effectively organisations combine digital innovation with genuine human connection.

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