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For all businesses, taking full advantage of your resources and making the most of what is available plays a huge role in promoting organisation growth, revenue increase, and general success. This is especially important for businesses in the hospitality, leisure and alfresco industries where growth is extremely reliant on physical footfall and driving traffic.
Commercial outdoor spaces are often some of the most underutilised commercial tools for facilitating this business growth. In particular, monetising outdoor environments as much as possible can have a huge impact on overall growth.
Installing a terrace or paving area can be incredibly impactful both up close and at a distance, adding an extra layer of exclusivity to your space’s appearance. Particularly if your branding centres around a luxurious approach to service, terraces can add an additional touch of class if approached correctly. It’s fine details like this that often make the difference between capturing a customer and them passing you by.
At AEL, we specialise in designing, building and installing outdoor solutions that increase footfall and improve the customer experience, whatever the weather. Leveraging nearly 20 years of knowledge and practise, we have put together this guide to help businesses refurbish their outdoor environments in the most efficient way possible, ensuring that you can maximise the impact of your external space all year round.
Use this as a resource to identify exactly how you can refurbish your outdoor environment and ensure it remains both useful and effective at all times.
Seating areas
When refurbishing outdoor areas – whether for a restaurant, pub garden, or less commercial setting – seating is key. Improving the customer experience is at the heart of amplifying the effectiveness of your outdoor environment, meaning that whatever furniture you opt for, it should allow for optimal customer enjoyment. Regarding seating, improving the user experience is primarily about creating a comfortable and spacious environment that permits easy conversation and relaxation.
At AEL, we supply and install a vast range of outdoorseating options that are hand-selected based on comfort, design and durability to ensure that all the spaces we refurbish are as customer-friendly as possible. Additionally, it’s important to consider branding and attractiveness within the commercial outdoor environment, as the presentation of your seating will also play a major role in grabbing the attention of customers and getting them engaged with your business. To this end, we also offer a host of bespoke customisation options for all of our seating ranges, whether they are benches, stools, or outdoor booths.
Age-Appropriate Attractions and Activities
In the UK, many businesses within the alfresco, leisure and hospitality industries are popular family destinations both during summer and throughout the year. If you are looking to upgrade your outdoor environment and already have a family-friendly business, it might be worth adapting your space accordingly to cater to this potentially lucrative audience.
When refurbishing your outdoor space with families in mind, the primary focus should be on providing enticing activities for a range of different age groups. Whether it’s an all-encompassing play area catering to a wide age group or a small imaginative play centre that provides enrichment and role-play opportunities for little ones, it’s important to cater to the whole family.
One of the most effective methods for adding a family-friendly aspect to your commercial outdoor space is by tapping into familiarity. Giant versions of classic family favourites such as Giant Jenga, Connect-Four, Chess and Ping Pong can be affordable and attractive options that appeal to everyone, though they are far from the only choices. Play equipment, furniture choices, safety surfacing and fencing all play a role in making your outdoor space family-friendly and should be considered equally during any playground refurbishment.
Shade and Shelter
One of the fundamental issues with many commercial outdoor spaces is the fact that they become unenticing or worse, unusable, during adverse weather conditions. Time spent with your available outdoor space empty simply equates to lost revenue so regardless of what the weather is like, it makes sense to ensure that it can be used all year round. To this end, installing retractable roof systems, shade or shelter solutions can be a very important and sound investment.
As mentioned previously, the goal is to balance improving user experience with attractive and on-brand furniture. Giant umbrellas, awnings, pergolas and retractable roofs all offer shelter from the sun or rain, which is exactly what customers will be looking for during days out in uncomfortable weather. Building on this, our own range of shade and shelter options are available with a host of customisation and branding opportunities. This way, it’s easy to create an eye-catching yet practical shelter solution that works perfectly with your brand and allows your outdoor space to be used at all times.
Additionally, it’s important to consider temperature and lighting, too. Monetising your outdoor environment during the evening and the colder months is also possible through refurbishing your space with well-placed heaters and lights. Alternatively, many of our shading alternatives also come with optional heat and light integration, creating a holistic outdoor solution that prepares your outdoor environment for year-round use.
Select Outdoor Furniture that Amplifies Footfall and Revenue
These are far from the only considerations to keep in mind when refurbishing your outdoor environment, but they do play a key role in ensuring year-round monetisation and success.
With nearly 20 years’ experience, we have helped to lead UK brands to revitalise their outdoor environments and drive business growth. From quaint independent pubs to large restaurant chains, our expert design and installation teams can cater to your needs and requirements.
Take our virtual showroom tour or get in touch with us and we will gladly provide you with bespoke furniture suggestions and advice based on your personal requirements or goals.
28 August 2021