Case studies
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
How O₂ Motion visitor insight helped RSPB improve experiences across its reserves
4 minutes
20th February 2026
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The RSPB is Europe’s largest nature conservation charity, managing more than 200 nature reserves across the UK.
About 170 of these are open to visitors, varying from sites with minimal infrastructure to complex commercial destinations featuring cafés, shops, play areas and more.
The team wanted to focus on priority commercial reserves and gain a deeper understanding of visitor trends and behaviour.
Although they already had some data, it was difficult to build a complete picture of who was visiting, when they arrived and how far they had travelled.
This limited the organisation’s ability to make fully informed, data-driven decisions around staffing, marketing, fundraising and visitor experience planning.
The team needed a clearer, consistent and reliable view of visitors and operational flow across the entire reserve network.
“The challenge we faced was having limited data to support evidence-based decisions for our commercial and visitor operations, as well as to deepen our understanding of our visitor audience.”
Brona Doyle, Visitor Experience Design Manager, RSPB
Why RSPB chose O₂ Motion
RSPB already worked with us, so when the team explored how to gather deeper insight, O₂ Motion was a natural place to start.
It uses anonymised and aggregated data from the O₂ network to help organisations understand how groups of people dwell and move, in addition to their mobile web and app interests (without identifying individuals).
After reviewing other options, the team found nothing else that offered the same clarity, value or ease of use as O₂ Motion Micro Location Insights, which enables a deep understanding of visitors to a specific site or location.
These can show visitor volumes, broad age and gender profiles and the areas visitors travel from, so organisations can make informed decisions about services, operations, marketing and experiences.
“We did look at other suppliers, but we just didn’t find a service that fitted exactly what we needed. They were more costly and complicated for less.”
Angela Roberts, Project Manager, RSPB
What made the difference for RSPB:
- Clearer visitor numbers
- Demographic profiles
- The ability to know where visitors travelled from (postcode areas and districts)
- Repeat visitor information
- Seasonal and hourly trends
- Web and app interests to identify audience segments
- A simple, intuitive portal that teams could understand quickly
How the insight spread across the organisation
RSPB began with a pilot across 10 core reserves, working with reserve operations and internal marketing and insight teams. A second phase of reserves were added a year later to ensure a good level of base audience data on its operations.
Teams finally had consistent, reliable data to help provide insights including:
- When most visitors arrive, dwell time and repeat visit rate
- How varied visitor experiences and events attract different audiences
- The proportion of local visitors by postcode
- How visitor profiles shift through the seasons
“The second group of reserves made significantly greater use of the data, informed by insights from the initial phase. Their teams were highly engaged and eager to access the dataset."
Brona Doyle, Visitor Experience Design Manager, RSPB
RSPB can now make decisions with confidence
With O₂ Motion Micro Location Insights, in place, teams across the charity acted quickly.
Smarter operations
Reserve teams reshaped staffing patterns and opening times to match visitor behaviour.
Better experiences
Teams identified clear differences between everyday visitors and event audiences, helping them redesign or expand events.
More targeted marketing
The marketing team used travel and demographic data to target specific postcodes and channels, including testing new ones like Reddit.
Stronger fundraising cases
Movement insights supported funding bids.
Where the insight is having an impact so far
RSPB now has a reliable foundation to guide decisions across:
- Marketing and communications
- Visitor experience design
- Staffing and cost efficiency
- Development planning for high-priority reserves
With a central insights analyst now in place, the team is bringing all the data together so every reserve can build its own visitor profile as it plans ahead.
“The data returned so far provides a good indication that the approach is delivering results.”
Brona Doyle, Visitor Experience & Events Consultancy Manager, RSPB
What could O2 Motion Micro Location Insights help you see?
Give us a call on 0808 239 6550 to explore how O₂ Motion can help your organisation.
Want to speak to one of the team?
call 0800 064 3790
