With vaccination rates on the rise, more venues are welcoming fans back, responsibly and safely. It’s still a tough road though. There are still significant physical and psychological barriers that continue to discourage fans from attending our venues. Now, Ops teams are creating Smart Venues capable of delivering personalized experiences that respond to a different set of expectations.

Much like office workers who are now attached to the home office lifestyle, our venue owners and operators face a challenge. Luring fans, now firmly entrenched in a culture of home entertainment, back to the public realm. What’s needed are smart venues that can overcome these challenges in a responsive, personalized way.

Operational efficiency in a new era

Most people would agree that live events provide a truly memorable, exciting experience that TV can’t match. It falls on the venue owners and primarily their Operations teams to remove the barriers of event attendance, so fans can get back to their natural habitat.

So what are the challenges that fans most often cite as their biggest concerns?

• Traffic – Vehicular and pedestrian bottlenecks at entry points, that cause frustration and delays
• Parking information – parking costs, time limits, availability of parking
• Event information – Lack of direction to event destinations at the venue
• Food and Bev – Lack of clarity on food and beverage availability at the venue, and where it is located
• Egress – Confusion surrounding safely leaving the venue by the most efficient route
• Timing – event times, event conclusions, post-event amenity availability and closing times

Smart Venues – Real-time and personalized information

Traffic congestion can simply be the result of insufficient traffic capability. However, just as often it’s the result of challenges in managing the traffic efficiently. The volume and timing of when fans arrive are organic and ever-changing. That’s a big problem for Ops teams – what works well in one circumstance is a catastrophe in another.

Once at the venue, Ops teams have thousands of customers with different needs, at different times. Expecting a single set of directions to work in every circumstance is unrealistic. Fans are unforgiving if the information they’re given doesn’t provide the specific answer they’re after.

One thing technology has been hugely successful in improving is communications, yet many venues have rudimentary communications systems that let fans down time and again. Static physical or digital signage is no longer acceptable to fans – they expect personalized information in real-time, just like they get in other facets of their digitally-driven lives. Fans want and need Smart Venues that cater to this expectation.

How to deliver personalized experiences in real-time

The most important thing that Operations teams and the owners of venues should consider is that there’s no single magic bullet to connecting with your fans as they approach, arrive and engage with your venue. In the same way that you’ll market your events through multiple channels, venue information should be available in the ways most easily accessed by different types of fans. A Smart Venue will flex and change as the event approaches, to account not just for different types of fans, but also for different types of events.

Our venues have changed, our fans’ needs have evolved. Smart Venues provide a different approach to venue comms and Operational management.

Information and navigation for smart venues

There are many ways we communicate with our fans on event day; their phone, digital signage, parking signage, wayfinding information, interactive touchscreens, PA systems and of course directly, through our event teams. If we’re able to give each of these channels an accurate, consistent set of information, then we’re able to keep our fans in the loop, empowered and free to enjoy what they love.

At PAM, this is how we approach the challenges that venues face and how we aim to make venues far more fan-centric. Smart Venues are connected environments that provide connected experiences as a result.

Smart Venue owners and operators use PAM to help fans enjoy the busiest and most difficult precincts around the world. Our clients use our advanced, agile and adaptive navigation system so their customers can better understand their environment, and their environment can better understand their customers.

Stadiums, universities, airports, hospitals, resorts, smart cities… every day we turn huge spaces into familiar places where people love to spend their time and money.