Crowd Planning for Holiday Season
Within a matter of weeks or days, museums and amusement parks can get hit with a huge influx of crowds that come with busy seasons such as holidays or even summer.
While it might be easy to underestimate the surge of visitors that come during the holidays and other peak periods, due diligence in your crowd planning strategy is a necessity. The British Museum, for example, even considered widening its entrance following a busy summer season.
Even if you’re not getting 25,000 visitors a day, like the Sistine Chapel, you still want to prepare for the worst and ensure that your facilities are running smoothly and safely.
Below are some solid tips to bolster your crowd planning strategy for the holidays.
Increase Number of Staff for Crowd Planning During the Holidays
Big crowds call for a higher demand for staff and on-floor personnel. While you’re going to need an increase across your venue-staffing needs, you may also need to increase your security count during the holidays. More crowds equates to more risk, and you want to make sure you’ve taken all the steps to ensure the safety of your guests, staff members, and exhibit items.
You also want an increase in usher guides and information desks. Heavy crowds during the holidays will be easier to manage if you have enough guides and staff members to assist and inform your visitors on where they need to be. This will help things run more smoothly, providing for a better visitor experience during the holidays.
Increase Number of Signs for Holiday Crowd Planning
Even with an increased staff size, there’s no way to put a staff member in every corner of your museum during the holidays. To mitigate the traffic that comes with increased attendance during the holidays, make sure that there are enough signs to help guide your visitors.
You should include:
- Bathroom signs
- Exit and emergency exit signs
- Staircase and elevator signs if relevant
- Cafe and snack bar signs
- Gallery and exhibit signs
- Do not enter or staff only signs
- Smoking areas
- Designated ticketing lines
You also want to make sure your signs are clear and large enough to read. If you’re more of a science or technology-based museum, you can also use digital signs as an opportunity to create a futuristic feel to your museum.
Smarter Ticketing Technology To Improve Holiday Season Museum Crowd Planning
Having a smart and up-to-date ticketing software can make a world of difference for your museum and your staff. Below are some of the most notable benefits of utilizing smarter ticketing technology, especially during the holiday season.
- Safe Servers: When you use cloud-based ticketing technology, your servers are maintained through the cloud, outside of your facilities. This means that you get automatic updates, and you’ll never have to worry about maintaining the hardware. This leads to 24/7 online ticketing and more reliable online servers
- Shorter Ticket Booth Lines: Utilizing an advanced POS will help decrease lines at the ticket booth, leading to happy visitors and staff members. Advanced POS systems can be implemented to mobile phones and tablets, allowing your staff to get on the ground and sell tickets outside of the booth. Additionally, your staff can introduce membership benefits and create new members through their POS.
- Customizable Configurations: Ticketing software with advanced configuration capabilities will provide you with up-to-date reporting on ticket sales and visitor trends. You can utilize this information to manage your events and introduce new layouts to your POS system as needed.
The holiday seasons don’t have to be a managerial headache if you appropriately prepare, and a big part of that preparation comes with having the right technology.
ACME ticketing has today’s leading POS system and cloud-based ticketing technology, making sure you can sell a high volume of tickets with ease and efficiency. Your staff will love the sleek, simple design that ACME offers, and your guests will love the short lines and easy-to-use online ticketing platform.
Manage your crowds with ease and see the ACME demo today.