Reopening entertainment venues and cultural institutions during Covid-19 - How TIMIFY can help

With many countries beginning to ease lockdown restrictions, it is clear that appointment booking and managing customer flow is going to be a major part of the new reality for many businesses.

TIMIFY’s appointment booking and scheduling software could be a crucial support to control the number and flow of people visiting your business at any given time and to bring structure, efficiency and convenience to how customers reconnect with your business.

In this article, we take a look at the measures impacting cultural institutions and entertainment venues and how TIMIFY could be used to be compliant while maintaining a high quality customer experience.

Public events, libraries, cinemas and theatres

Countries such as Spain and Italy have given guidance on cultural events, with the former stating that indoor events will initially be limited to fewer than 50 people, outdoor events up to 400 people, though they must be pre-booked and seated at a safe distance.

Libraries must limit numbers and, in many cases, may choose to install booked sessions to avoid overcrowding.

Across most territories cinemas and theatres can reopen but with very limited capacity and spacing between audience members.

While theatres, cinemas and event organisers may already have online ticketing in place, the new regulations may require a separate system better equipped to manage limited capacity and automatic buffer times to allow for essential hygiene practices after events.

Event organisers may still prefer to host their event entirely online or with a mixed offering, giving attendees the choice between attending in person or via video conferencing. 

What TIMIFY can do: 

1. Manage social distancing by setting maximum attendee numbers for events. For visits to your building, offer limited numbers of bookings for separate time slots 
2. Ensure time for cleaning to take place between appointments is always automatically added before or after bookings, which also helps minimise crossover of attendees
3. Bring greater control and intricacy to employee schedules, ensuring they only visit your premises when absolutely necessary. This can help reduce staff numbers on-site at any one time
4. Be prepared for contact tracing. A digital database keeps track of all customer visits and staff schedules in one place.
5. Take your events digital, managing all aspects of attendance, scheduling and video conferencing in one system
6. Make your events online bookable from any channel
7. Minimise interactions between customers and employees, by allowing participants to pay for a place during the appointment booking

How to do it

• Use our Group Booking Function to activate online booking for any size of group events, set different maximum attendee numbers for each of your event types (e.g. indoor / outdoor)
• Allow attendees to book places for other friends or colleagues if required
• Use the Split Booking feature to split one long event into a series of sub-stages or sub-events. This allows you to assign different resources to each stage, limiting staff numbers on site at any one time and unnecessary contact with attendees 
• Add buffer times between events, allowing space between customer visits and time for cleaning processes. Customers don’t see the buffer time, but it gets auto-added to your calendar when a booking is made
• Custom booking forms to collect all needed personal information from your visitors for the purpose of contact tracing with the Data Fields Feature
• If client interactions needed to be traced in relation to Covid-19, you can instantly find the booking and visit histories in the TIMIFY Calendar, as well as a clear overview of the staff resources that were working at the time
• Easily set up video conferencing, manage online bookings and payment, secure entry to live video sessions with TIMIFY Video Apps
• Add booking buttons and links to your website or social media channels, as well as QR codes to marketing materials, posters and stickers on your premises with the help of the Booking Links App.
• Simply activate online payment for any number of individual events or services, making it obligatory if required.

TIMIFY’s wide range of functions are helping businesses small and large deal with the impact of COVID-19. To learn more about our solution and how it can benefit your business, visit our website and start a conversation with one of our representatives.