Bowling Entertainment Centers: Rolling People Counting Tech Into Operations
April 7, 2022
So you’ve heard your neighboring community center is using people counting technology… but why? Here are 3 of the most common reasons parks, swimming pools, and rec centers use SenSource technologies.
1. Accurate Facility Usage Data
Knowing how many people are using your park, swimming pool or rec center is a key data point in basing operational decisions. But as we emerge from the pandemic, historical foot traffic trends of past years will likely not apply to how visitors will behave this summer. It’s more important than ever to collect accurate data to realize your peak and low times of the day, days of the week, weeks of the month, etc.
Staffing
Armed with spot-on facility usage data, you can efficiently schedule staff to coincide with fluctuating visitor arrivals. Staff is likely one of your largest operating expenses and even a few hours a week trimmed off the schedule can equal a significant cost-savings over the course of the season. Furthermore, proper staffing will result in improved customer experience.
Also, using people counting sensors to monitor multiple entrances or various interior areas such as the swimming pool, basketball courts or weight rooms can reveal traffic trends that can optimize staff placement. With increased cleaning protocols, you’ll likely need staff spread throughout your rec center. Let the data guide you as to where to assign staff, focusing on most-used areas.
Marketing and Events
Running a promotion or hosting an event? Calculate marketing effectiveness by determining how many additional people visited. Hard stats make for great promotional materials following events too with headlines like, “Yesterday’s Trees of Ohio book signing attracted 250 nature-loving visitors to the Park’s Welcome Center”.
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2. Occupancy Monitoring
Counties across the country are in various stages of reopening from the pandemic. The general rule from the CDC still remains that inside buildings and enclosed areas occupancy should be limited to ensure patrons can practice social distancing.
The CDC is recommending for public swimming pools and aquatic centers to “Limit occupancy of enclosed spaces (such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and breakrooms) to make it easy for staff and patrons to stay at least 6 feet away from people they don’t live with.”
For public areas such as welcome centers, educational facilities, locker rooms, indoor sports fields, and rec centers, SenSource’s SafeSpace Occupancy Monitoring Solution is an easy way to monitor and communicate occupancy limits. If you’re planning to have staff manually tally occupancy, switching to SafeSpace will have a quick ROI – and better yet, it frees your staff to focus on more worthwhile tasks.
The same people counting sensor used for traditional people counting data is used for SafeSpace. Should occupancy limits become a metric of the past, you’ll still be set to collect powerful facility usage data. SafeSpace’s occupancy calculations and tools reside within SenSource’s Vea Analytics Platform. It’s easy to remove the Occupancy tools from your SaaS subscription and continue to access your foot traffic data, dashboards and historical reports.
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3. Evidence-Based Proposals
Nobody is starting their proposal with “It feels like…” or “I think it’s time to…”
When making your case for grants, renovations, or expansions, you’ll want to state the cold, hard facts. For example, “The park’s Wildlife Education Center has seen a 45% increase in annual visitors since the Center was constructed in 1995.”
Proposal writing is time-consuming enough, let the data be one less thing you have to structure. SenSource’s Vea Analytics Platform makes it easy to create and export historical reports.
Aside from proposals, keep key personnel in-the-know of your facility’s usage throughout the year by setting up automated, emailed reports. You can design a dashboard using Vea’s drag-and-drop building tools and schedule it once, then your key personnel will receive the reoccurring dashboard in their inbox.
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