How to improve check-in and access control of your attendees?

This arti­cle is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at large events, but it can of course be use­ful to any event plan­ner.

In order to quick­ly and effi­cient­ly man­age the flow of atten­dees on the day of your event, a check-in and access con­trol area must be set up. Sev­er­al options exist — here is an overview of a typ­i­cal space, to be adjust­ed to your venue and event.

1. Check­ing tick­ets
2. Queues
3. Search — Secu­ri­ty
4. Lock­ers
5. Tick­et con­trol area
6. End of con­trol area

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This arti­cle is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at large events, but it can of course be use­ful to any event plan­ner.

In order to quick­ly and effi­cient­ly man­age the flow of atten­dees on the day of your event, a check-in and access con­trol area must be set up. Sev­er­al options exist — here is an overview of a typ­i­cal space, to be adjust­ed to suit your venue and event.

1. Checking tickets

If the num­ber of peo­ple on your staff allows it, it is advis­able to car­ry out a visu­al check of the tick­ets before even allow­ing par­tic­i­pants to enter the access con­trol area. This will pre­vent peo­ple with­out tick­ets slow­ing things down.

In the event that a per­son shows up with­out a tick­et, you can send them back to the sales or recep­tion area.

The sales area

You can set one up pro­vid­ed your tick­ets aren’t sold-out. Even when the event is sold out, some event plan­ners choose to allo­cate a small quo­ta of tick­ets to on-site sales. On the one hand, this lim­its the lev­el of dis­sat­is­fac­tion of last-minute buy­ers; on the oth­er hand, it dis­cour­ages the resale of tick­ets on the black mar­ket around the event. To do this, you will need pow­er, inter­net access and a con­nect­ed com­put­er or tablet.

The reception

It will help you solve any issue direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to the tick­et­ing sys­tem. For exam­ple, you can give your atten­dees the option to pick up a dupli­cate of their tick­et (for tick­ets pur­chased on Weezevent) or a pass (for tick­ets pur­chased on a reseller’s net­work) upon pre­sen­ta­tion of valid ID. To do this, sim­ply set up two work­sta­tions (com­put­er or tablet) con­nect­ed via the Inter­net to Weezevent’s back office and a desk­top print­er.

In case of inter­net fail­ure, 4G don­gles can be rent­ed from Weezevent as back-up.

2. Queues

The foun­da­tion of any good access con­trol sys­tem is com­pre­hen­sive and well-locat­ed infor­ma­tion in order to avoid any mis­un­der­stand­ing amongst atten­dees. We rec­om­mend that you put sig­nage up at the start of the lanes. E.g.: ” Get your tick­ets ready”, so that atten­dees present their tick­ets with the bar­code in plain view.

If nec­es­sary, such as when using wrist­bands, this type of infor­ma­tion will allow you to effi­cient­ly divide your wait­ing area into sev­er­al sep­a­rate queues. E.g.: “Day Pass”, “Week­end Pass”, …

Staff at the entrance of the queues can use the tick­et ver­i­fi­ca­tion stage to direct atten­dees to the right queue.

It is pos­si­ble to check all your tick­ets (e‑tickets and print­ed tick­ets, issued by either Weezevent or resellers) using WeezA­c­cess Pro devices. This sys­tem offers sev­er­al ben­e­fits — quick train­ing and easy-to-use by your tick­et scan­ning team, com­pre­hen­sive sta­tis­tics avail­able at any time on your Weezevent inter­face.

You can find more infor­ma­tion about Weezevent’s access con­trol sys­tem here: WeezA­c­cess. This access con­trol sys­tem is also avail­able free of charge on iPhone through our WeezA­c­cess mobile app, which can be down­loaded for free from the Apple Store.

If it is nec­es­sary, sep­a­rate queues using a sys­tem of bar­ri­ers by installing them in a Z‑shape. This will ben­e­fit you in sev­er­al ways: first of all, the wait­ing time seems short­er for peo­ple attend­ing your event. We rec­om­mend imple­ment­ing a sig­nage sys­tem ded­i­cat­ed to inform­ing par­tic­i­pants about the sched­ules, pro­gram­ming and access of your event. More impor­tant­ly, Z‑shaped bar­ri­ers allow a more reg­u­lar flow of peo­ple than straight bar­ri­ers, there­by pre­vent­ing crowd surges and main­tain­ing a good lev­el of safe­ty.

3. Search — Security

Each event has its own secu­ri­ty require­ments. In order to help the secu­ri­ty team present on site you should car­ry out a pre­lim­i­nary search of the atten­dees. The staff in charge of the search/security must include at least one man and one woman. The search/security area should be locat­ed direct­ly after the Z‑shaped bar­ri­er and before the tick­et con­trol area. This allows you to set up a fil­ter to eas­i­ly man­age the num­ber of atten­dees gain­ing access to the next step. We also rec­om­mend that you pro­vide bins in this area to allow atten­dees to dis­card any objects not allowed in the venue.

Any­one not meet­ing the secu­ri­ty cri­te­ria can be brought back to the entrance by means of a closed line on the side, secured by the pres­ence of oth­er secu­ri­ty guards.

4. Lockers

If you allow atten­dees to col­lect cer­tain items pro­hib­it­ed on site at the end of this event, the search/security area is the ide­al place to set up lock­ers to be used by atten­dees wish­ing to leave some of their items at the entrance. It is up to you to set up guide­lines on the use of these lock­ers.

A search/security offi­cer can be placed in this area to cre­ate a link between the search area and the con­trol area, while invit­ing atten­dees to head towards the entrance.

5. Ticket control area

We rec­om­mend you put up clear sig­nage in the tick­et con­trol area. E.g.: “Have your tick­ets ready”.

Indeed, in most cas­es, time lost at access con­trol is due to the time it takes to get out and unfold tick­ets. This is why it is prefer­able that your atten­dees have their tick­ets in their hands through­out the con­trol process, with bar­codes in full view.

We rec­om­mend you place vol­un­teers check­ing tick­ets at the entrance of short queues sep­a­rat­ed by a sys­tem of straight bar­ri­ers. This set-up allows atten­dees to quick­ly and eas­i­ly see which vol­un­teers are avail­able to check their tick­ets. If a tech­ni­cal prob­lem aris­es in one of the rows, par­tic­i­pants can move to anoth­er con­trol row.

In order to avoid any fraud when check­ing tick­ets, we advise your scan­ning team to posi­tion them­selves with their backs against one of the two bar­ri­ers sur­round­ing them. Thus, no attendee will be able to access the event with­out being duly con­trolled. Thanks to this sys­tem, you can have two con­trol sta­tions per line — one on either side of the line.

If turnout is high, you can also choose to move your tick­et scan­ning staff fur­ther back into the bar­ri­er. How­ev­er, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of your secu­ri­ty team — not your scan­ning staff — to reg­u­late the flow of peo­ple.

6. End of control area

In order to avoid any unnec­es­sary crowd­ing of atten­dees, which could affect the prop­er func­tion­ing of the access con­trol area, we rec­om­mend plac­ing sev­er­al secu­ri­ty offi­cers at the end of the area. Their mis­sion will be to invite atten­dees to leave the con­trol area quick­ly and pro­ceed to enter the event.

Man­ag­ing the flow of peo­ple at access con­trol depends on how you pace the pro­gramme of your event. If you announce a much-antic­i­pat­ed act dur­ing your event, you will see a peak in access con­trol atten­dance half an hour to an hour before said act. In order to avoid any incon­ve­nience, we advise you to open the doors ear­ly enough (allow half an hour to an hour before the start of your event).

All these tips depend of course on the organ­i­sa­tion of your event and can be adjust­ed to suit every­one’s needs. They can­not replace the exper­tise of a secu­ri­ty com­mit­tee.

Do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at info@weezevent.com so that one of our advi­sors can help you!

We wish you a good event, with fast and secure access con­trol. With Weezevent, you can do more than just con­trol­ling access. Dis­cov­er all our oth­er ser­vices by click­ing on the but­ton below:

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