Cedar Fair’s digital strategy based on ‘frictionless fun’

Most companies will not hesitate to promote their organizations as a fun place to work, especially when trying to attract new hires. In fact, the search term ‘fun’ returns hundreds of thousands of postings at one of the more popular job websites — more than 16,000 in Massachusetts alone. But far fewer companies highlight fun as a customer success mandate.

Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. is one organization that takes fun very seriously and has history to prove it. The company got its start in 1870 as a bathing beach, boat dock, and dance hall on the shores of Lake Erie and has since established itself as an industry leader with 15 amusement and water parks, as well as six hotels and other park-related resort properties throughout the lower 48 states and in Canada. More than 28 million people visit these locations each year, generating more than $1B in annual revenue, which delights and thrills those who follow the company and its NYSE ticker symbol FUN.

As everyone knows, however, in business today there is no fun without the support of technology fundamentals and innovation. Leading this effort for Cedar Fair is CIO Ty Tastepe, who joined the company about two years ago and oversees its technology strategy, implementation, and operational support across all the company’s properties.

“There’s no single function within the company that doesn’t rely on some form of technology,” notes Ty. “Every touchpoint has to be integrated with some other system or some other solution, so we have continuity from start to finish,” he adds, referring to this flow of interoperability as “frictionless fun.”

In this IDC CIO Executive Council Future Forward podcast interview, we talk with CIO Ty Tastepe about his challenges and thoughts on the impact emerging technologies such as generative AI will have on the organization’s approach to technology enablement.

The following are edited excerpts from our conversation. Click on the embedded links below to hear the full two-part podcast interview.  

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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