Cultural attraction guest services manager job description
A guest services manager runs the whole visit, from the ticket window to the exit, at a zoo, museum or botanical garden. They lead the admissions, guest services and gift shop teams and set each day's staffing from ticket sales and school bookings. They also own the plans for lost children, first aid calls and weather closures.
By the HireBus team · Updated · Pay data: BLS, May 2025
Median pay, museums, zoos and gardens · BLS, May 2025
Our Guest Services Manager runs the visit from the front gate to the exit. You lead the admissions, guest services, and gift shop teams, schedule seasonal staff to the attendance forecast, and handle complaints, lost children, and closures. You set the standard for how every guest is treated.
2. Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Hire, train, and schedule admissions, guest services, and gift shop staff, including the seasonal team.
Set each day's staffing from the attendance forecast, timed-ticket sales, and school group bookings.
Write and train the procedures for lost children, first aid calls, accessibility requests, and weather closures.
Manage cash handling, refunds, and rain checks, and review daily ticket and drawer reports with finance.
Resolve guest complaints, answer reviews and comment cards, and share patterns with other managers.
Order gift shop stock and set displays, using sales reports to restock best sellers.
Keep the ticketing system set up with current prices, ticket types, capacity limits, and member rules.
3. Key Tasks / Daily Activities
Check staffing, cash banks, ticket printers, scanners, and signs before the first guest arrives.
Watch lines and capacity through the day and move staff to where the waits are.
Meet school group leaders on busy field trip mornings and fix booking problems.
Handle escalated guest issues, refunds, and incident reports.
Close out: reconcile drawers and sales reports and log any incidents.
4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Guest satisfaction score: [your target].
Wait time at the front gate: [your target].
Complaints resolved the same day: [your target].
Cash and ticket variance: [your target].
Labor cost against attendance: [your target].
5. Required Qualifications and Skills
[3+] years in guest services, retail, hospitality, or admissions, including [1+] years supervising.
Experience scheduling hourly and seasonal staff.
Cash handling and point-of-sale experience.
Stays calm with upset guests and during emergencies.
First Aid, CPR, and AED certification, or willing to earn it within [30] days.
6. Preferred Experience
Experience at a zoo, aquarium, museum, theme park, or other attraction.
Has set up or run admissions software such as [your ticketing system].
Has written lost child, evacuation, or other guest safety procedures.
Experience with accessibility services such as sensory kits, wheelchairs, and accessible routes.
7. Physical Requirements
Stand and walk for most of an [8]-hour shift, much of it at the gate or outdoors.
Lift boxes of stock or supplies up to [30] pounds.
Work in heat, cold, and rain at an outdoor entrance.
With or without reasonable accommodation.
8. Work Environment and Schedule
Full-time. Weekends, holidays, and school break days are the busiest and are required.
Longer hours from opening day through the end of peak season.
Some evening events and early mornings for school groups.
9. Compensation and Benefits
Pay: [range and hourly or salary basis].
Additional pay: [overtime, bonus or incentive terms, or none].
Benefits: [health, dental, vision, retirement, paid time off, and when they start].
10. Company Culture and Overview
[Two or three sentences on what your company does, the area you serve, and the support a new guest services manager gets in the first 90 days.]
11. How to Apply
[Apply link or email]. Our process: [phone interview, in-person interview, and next steps]. Contact [hiring contact] if you need an accommodation during the application process.
Need help filling this role? HireBus posts the ad, Iris interviews every applicant by phone before you do, and you decide who to hire. Start hiring now
What makes guest services management different at a cultural attraction
Any guest services manager handles lines, complaints and staffing. At a nonprofit or public attraction, the season, the animals and the collection add problems of their own.
Buses and the forecast set the day
Spring field trips can put several school buses at the gate before opening, and a sunny July Saturday can fill the walk-up line by mid-morning. The manager builds each day's schedule from timed-ticket sales, school bookings and the weather, then moves people from the shop to the windows as the lines shift.
Teen staff have school-year hour limits
Front-of-house crews often include high school students. In any week school is in session, federal rules cap 14- and 15-year-olds at 18 hours. On a school day, Fridays included, the cap is 3 hours, all outside school hours. From the day after Labor Day through May, they must also be off by 7 p.m. That shapes after-school and weekend shifts in spring and fall. A stricter state rule wins. Source: U.S. Department of Labor: Fact Sheet #43, child labor in nonagricultural jobs.
Service dogs near the animal exhibits
At a zoo, the ADA lets you keep service dogs out of exhibit areas where the animals are a dog's natural prey or predators, since a dog there can make them agitated or aggressive. You can't keep service dogs out of the rest of the zoo. The manager writes down which areas are closed to dogs and trains every associate to give guests the same answer. Source: ADA.gov: Frequently asked questions about service animals and the ADA.
Scooters, power chairs and other devices
Wheelchairs, including power chairs and electric scooters, go anywhere the public goes. Other power-driven devices, such as a Segway, must be allowed unless a real safety risk rules out that type of device. Write that policy ahead of time, type by type. Staff may ask whether the device is used for a disability. They must accept a state disability placard or the guest's word, and can't ask about the disability itself. Source: ADA.gov: Wheelchairs, mobility aids and other power-driven mobility devices.
Tell guests what's closed before they pay
An animal off exhibit for vet care, a gallery closed for an install or a garden bed between plantings can spoil a visit. The manager checks with keepers, curators or gardeners before opening, posts closures at the windows and online, and lets associates offer a rain check when a big draw is out.
How much cultural attraction guest services managers make
The closest BLS group for cultural attraction guest services managers is First-Line supervisors of entertainment and recreation workers. First-Line supervisors of entertainment and recreation workers who work for museums, zoos, gardens, and historic sites earned a median of $23.49 an hour ($48,860 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s about the same as the $48,560 median for First-Line supervisors of entertainment and recreation workers in all industries. About 1,910 of the 103,190 First-Line supervisors of entertainment and recreation workers in that survey work for museums, zoos and gardens.
Usually a salaried, full-time job. The seasonal leads and supervisors who report to this manager are typically hourly.
Museums, zoos and gardens
$48,860$48,860 median Middle half $42,110–$60,680 10th–90th $36,260–$75,410
All industries
$48,560$48,560 median Middle half $39,400–$62,320 10th–90th $34,760–$79,060
$20k$30k$40k$50k$60k$70k$80k$90k
10th–90th percentileMiddle halfMedianAnnual pay, May 2025. Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
Annual pay by percentile
Group
10th
25th
Median
75th
90th
Museums, zoos and gardens
$36,260
$42,110
$48,860
$60,680
$75,410
All industries
$34,760
$39,400
$48,560
$62,320
$79,060
BLS groups museums, zoos, botanical gardens and historic sites together. Post a real range for your market in the ad.
Skills to hire for, and what you can teach
Hire for these
Has led hourly and seasonal teams through a busy summer or holiday season
Stays calm and kind with an angry guest or a frightened parent
Reads attendance, ticket and drawer reports and acts on them the same day
Writes procedures a first-week seasonal hire can follow
Makes the call to close an area, start the rain plan or call EMS without waiting to be told
Teach these on the job
Your ticket types, capacity limits and member rules
Your codes for lost children, first aid and evacuations
The day's keeper talks, feedings or tours, and where guests gather for them
Gift shop ordering and the store's best sellers
Your service dog and mobility device policies
The job runs on the ticketing and membership system, handheld scanners, radios and a staff scheduling app, plus the daily sales and drawer reports. If this manager will also build ticket types, prices and capacity limits in that system, put it in the posting; setting a system up is a different skill from selling on it.
Cultural attraction guest services manager interview questions
They have their own page: 6 questions that test this job, what strong and weak answers sound like, and a work exercise to run with your finalists.
Your own numbers go in each blank: last season's attendance, payroll and survey results. Judge peak days apart from quiet weekdays.
Guest satisfaction score
Ask one post-visit survey question the same way all year, emailed the day after the visit. Read what guests write about staff, lines and restrooms.
Wait time at the front gate
Stand at the back of the line at set times on peak days and time how long it takes to get a ticket scanned. Scan counts by gate from the ticketing system fill in the hours between.
Complaints resolved the same day
Log every complaint from the desk, email, comment cards and reviews, stamped when it arrives and when it's settled. Count the ones settled before the site shut that day.
Cash and ticket variance
At close, compare each drawer count and card batch with the ticketing system's sales report. Track the gap by station and by associate, and review refunds on their own.
Labor cost against attendance
Divide front-of-house payroll for the day by paid and member attendance. Compare like days, such as rainy Tuesdays with rainy Tuesdays, never July with January.
Duties decide it, not the job title. Under the federal executive exemption, managing a department must be the main part of the job. The manager must regularly direct at least two full-time staff, or part-timers adding up to the same hours. They must be able to hire and fire, or their advice on it must carry real weight. A salary test applies too. A manager who spends most days selling tickets on a short-staffed gate may not qualify. Check your state's overtime rules as well.
How much does a cultural attraction guest services manager make?
First-Line supervisors of entertainment and recreation workers who work for museums, zoos, gardens, and historic sites earned a median of $23.49 an hour ($48,860 a year) in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The middle half earned between $42,110 and $60,680 a year. Pay also depends on your local market, experience and overtime.
Can we give guests free passes for leaving a review?
Don't tie any reward to a review. The FTC's consumer review rule bans offering something for a review that has to be positive or negative. Google's policy goes further and bans any incentive for posting a review. Ask every guest the same way, by email after the visit or on a sign at the exit. Answer bad reviews as carefully as good ones.
Should the guest services manager also run the gift shop?
This template puts admissions, guest services and the store under one manager. That works when the shop is small and shares a pool of associates with the gate. Once the store has its own buyer, budget or online sales, a separate retail manager usually earns the job. Then the guest services manager can focus on the gate and the grounds.
When should we start hiring for the summer season?
Work back from opening day. Leave time for background checks where you run them, a full training day, and a few practice shifts on spring weekends before the first big crowd. Ask last year's best seasonal staff back first, since they need the least training. Students often can't start full-time until their school year ends, so plan for a thin crew in late May or early June.
What experience transfers from outside museums and zoos?
Theme parks, ski resorts, big hotels and arenas all handle lines, cash, seasonal hiring and complaints at volume. What those candidates have to learn is the mission side. That means why the shop sells what it sells, how members expect to be treated, and the rules around the animals or the collection. Have them describe their worst rush day, start to finish, and what they would do differently now.
