IAAPA Education Sessions Feedback
The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) is the global association for the attractions industry, representing theme parks, water parks, family entertainment centres, museums, zoos, aquariums, resorts, and suppliers across more than 100 countries.
Each year, IAAPA hosts some of the industry's largest trade events across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, bringing together thousands of attractions professionals to learn, network, and discover new ideas and innovations shaping the future of the industry.
Partnership:
since 2022
Education Sessions Supported:
500+
Responses Collected at a Single Event:
10,000+
How IAAPA Uses In-the-Moment Feedback to Continuously Improve Its Education Programme
IAAPA Education Sessions
At the heart of every IAAPA Expo is its extensive education programme. Across multiple days and stages, hundreds of educational sessions are delivered, covering everything from guest experience and operations to leadership, technology, and emerging industry trends.
Behind every session is an enormous team effort. The IAAPA team works closely with volunteer committees and industry experts from around the world to identify the topics that matter most and build programmes that deliver genuine value to attendees.
The Challenge
With so much time and effort invested in the education programme, understanding what resonates with attendees is critical.
The best time to ask for feedback is when attendees are still in the room and the memory is still fresh. Once they walk away, the details start to fade.
Historically, IAAPA used paper evaluations, which generated strong participation but required significant time and manual effort to process. Later, QR code surveys were introduced, but response rates were not as good as expected.
With the popularity of the sessions, IAAPA needed a solution that could capture feedback quickly, accurately, and at scale.
The Solution
For the past five years, IAAPA has partnered with Avius to collect real-time feedback immediately after educational sessions.
Using Avius' simple and familiar smiley-face feedback solution, attendees can share their views in seconds before leaving the room, providing IAAPA with instant insights into session performance, speaker ratings, and future content opportunities.
The Results
- Five-year partnership supporting IAAPA's global education programme.
- More than 10,000 survey responses collected during IAAPA Expo US 2025 alone.
- Participation rates that exceeded previous paper-based methods.
- Immediate access to attendee ratings and comments.
- Valuable insight used to benchmark performance and shape future programmes.
The Method and The Survey Design
Collecting thousands of responses across hundreds of education sessions requires much more than simply placing a survey at the door.
Avius works closely with IAAPA's event ambassadors, providing training on when and how to approach attendees in a way that doesn't interrupt the session or disrupt the flow of people leaving the room. The aim is to give attendees enough time to reflect, share their opinions, and rate both the session and the speaker before they move on to their next activity.
Behind the scenes, the survey programme is also intelligently configured to match the event agenda. Surveys automatically switch between sessions, topics, and speakers throughout the day, ensuring attendees are always providing feedback on the correct presentation without any manual intervention.
This combination of well-trained ambassadors and smart survey automation has enabled IAAPA to consistently achieve high participation rates and capture meaningful feedback at scale.
The Impact
In-the-moment feedback has become an important part of IAAPA's continuous improvement process.
The data helps the team understand:
- Which topics generated the most engagement.
- Which sessions and formats delivered the greatest value.
- What attendees want to learn about in the future.
- Which speakers made the biggest impact on their audience.
The feedback is equally valuable for speakers themselves.
Every presenter invests significant time and expertise into preparing their session and wants to know one thing: Did I as an industry educator provide something genuinely valuable to the audience?
Real-time evaluations provide that answer, helping speakers understand what resonated and how they can make future sessions even more impactful.
By capturing feedback in the moment, IAAPA continues to create better educational experiences year after year, ensuring its programmes remain relevant, engaging, and valuable to the global attractions industry.
“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.”
Sean Bonner, Senior Director of Global Expos Education & Program Management, IAAPA