Queue and Flow Management

How do you measure the success of a major event in a city? Does an event increase revenue? How many more people are in the city during an large-scale event? Where do they park? These are some of the questions, that you can get answered using crowd-sourced data.
Many cities use sensors to measure real-time pedestrian flow, dwell time and movement patterns. The solution provides a cohesive picture of visitor experiences and an in-depth understanding of the impact of large-scale events, such as the annual Christmas markets. It enables the managers to review how long visitors take to move from one area to another, how long they linger, and which shops they visit.

An example of installation in Salerno with WiFi/Bluetooth sensors installed during the annual Christmas event "Luci d'artista".

The solution works by placing sensors at strategic points in a specified area. The sensors detect Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices, such as smartphones. By re-identifying devices from multiple sensors, the travel times, dwell times and movement patterns become available. The solution is non-intrusive and do not require any interaction from pedestrians. Considering that the smartphone penetration nears 80% of the mobile market, data collection from mobile devices provides hard numbers of a significant percentage of pedestrians.

Precise wait time and flow information is crucial in order to provide a first-class guest experience, improve capacity planning and maximize revenue.
Queues lines are the pet peeve of guests. The time spent waiting invariably comes at the top of the list of customer complaints.  The uncertainty around how long they will have to wait weighs heavily on their mind, particularly when confronted with what appears to be a lot of guest front of them.

BlipTrack help put lines in perspective. 
The BlipTrack queue and flow management solution is able to accurately measure and predict wait times, while simultaneously provide managers with data about how visitors move and use the park.

Wait times eases guest’s minds.
From a guest perspective, the solution lets the park display the wait times on screens and mobile applications. The constantly updated wait time information eliminates guesswork about how long the process will take, which help guests by reducing frustration. Guests can maximize their time in the park, giving them a more stress-free and pleasant park experience.

Early warning allows for proactive actions.
As the data are collected in real-time, the solution is able to provide early warning if ride and entrance lines become congested. This allows park managers to take proactive measures, such opening additional lines, or give way-finding to rides with shorter wait times.

Visibility to improve revenue and plan ahead.
Documentation of movement patterns is crucial to greater efficiency when planning and optimising the position of rides, retail outlets and services. By placing BlipTrack sensors at strategic points around the park, managers are provided with a cohesive picture of guest experiences—from the moment they arrive, to exiting, and everywhere in between. 

Managers can retrieve both live and historical information about specific patterns, such as walking routes, entrance and exit usage and time spent in specific areas—such as food stalls, rides, shops, restrooms and more. With this information, managers can detect and react to crowd hotspots and underused resources. They are provided with an understanding of how disruptions or changes affect standard behaviour, how to optimise each and every area to operate optimally, and how to add value of existing facilities and/or new investments.

Money is not made from people stuck standing in lines.
People standing in lines, such as at ticketing machines, entrances and rides, are not spending money on drinks, snacks, merchandise and more. An even distribution of guests throughout the park helps to reduce overall waiting times, reduce bottlenecks and ultimately increase revenues in food stalls, shops and other non-ride activities.

Decision support to scale capacity with demand.
Planning ahead and taking all necessary precautions is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to preventing bad publicity from overcrowding and alleviating harmful situations. By combining park operation with known data about guests, managers can in real-time, automatically and efficiently, scale staffing with guest attendance at the right times. By adding future expected growth, overall trends, events, holidays and more, capacity can more accurately be predicted and matched with demand for the days, weeks and months to come.

The in-house designed BlipTrack solution consists of various high-tech sensors and a sophisticated analysis platform. The solution delivers reporting capabilities with live and historical information in a web-based, intuitive user interface with compelling visualisations.

With insights and all the necessary tools to optimize operations, park managers can effectively improve revenue while maintaining a high level of customer service, with more satisfied and recurring guests as a result.

Stazioni

The success of a train station, and its image, is heavily influenced by the ability to handle passenger flow smoothly and efficiently. Documentation of movement patterns is crucial to greater efficiency when planning and optimizing the position of retail outlets and services.
Rail passenger transport has grown considerably during the last decades. Parallel to the increase in passenger numbers, train stations have transformed to places where people travel and perform activities, such as working, shopping and holding meetings. The combination means that the space is shared by more and more people. As capacity expansion is extremely expensive due to the dense urban environment in which these stations are situated, the need for valid passenger behavioral data to reduce bottlenecks and improve travelers comfort and safety, is very important.
In recent years more and more train stations have turned to the BlipTrack’s Flow Management solution to measure and understand complex visitor flows, to help optimise operations and improve revenue and guest experience.
To understand and improve individual areas of operations, it is important that the guest’s journey is seen as a single process, rather than as a string of isolated events. The understanding that all individual events influence each other is key to unlocking potential gains. BlipTrack measures passenger behavior, such as time spent on platforms, retail and other station facilities, time spent by non-travelers, transfers to and from platforms, and entrance / exit usage.

The data enables train stations to add value of existing facilities and/or new investments, optimize operations, and improve the passenger flow. Management is provided with specific and accurate statistical information on the use of retail and facilities, enabling the station to optimize each and every area to operate optimally.

The technology works by placing sensors at strategic points in the train station. The sensors detect anonymous device ID´s from mobile devices, such as mobile phones. By re-identifying device ID´s from multiple sensors, the dwell times and movement patterns become available.
BlipTrack delivers reporting capabilities with live and historical information in a web-based, intuitive user interface with compelling visualisations and real-time insights. The solution enables data extraction in any combination, allowing quick and efficient integration into existing management systems.

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