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Social Distancing using time slot event tickets

Event ticketing can help keep your event guests safe and ensure that, as an organizer, you are compliant with Covid-19 social distancing rules.

Time slot event ticketing can help you avoid creating queues.

What we have seen

Organizers of existing events have been using time slots to manage how many people arrive at their event and at what time. This has made the difference between continuing with their event or postponing until the pandemic is over.

Service providers have been using events with time slots to convert what would have been a "drop-in when ready" service into one where a known number of people arrive each hour and can then safely receive the service. In the current situation, no-one wants to drop in only to join a long queue.

Event tickets with time slots are not new, Coconut Tickets has offered this feature for the last 4 years. However, we are seeing a sharp rise in use since countries have started easing their lock-down restrictions, events are possible again, but only when implementing strict rules for social gatherings.

How time slots work

Ordinarily, an event would offer tickets for the whole day. Once the event has started your guests can arrive. By issuing time slots you can split your event into slices (aka time slots) and control the number of tickets sold for each slot.

For example, an event of 500 people that would have been open at 10am until 3 pm can offer timeslots at 10 am, 11 am, midday, 1 pm and 2 pm allowing 100 people to enter during each slot. If you can manage the full 500 people together at the venue safely then the time slots could each have the same closing time of 3 pm. If the venue can't safely accomodate all 500 people then you could establish 1 hour time slots such that event participants only stay for 1 hour.

Time slots don't have to be perfectly contigious. You may need a break between time slots to clean up and prepare for the next arrivals. For example, a vaccination clinic might offer time slots 10am-10:45am, 11am-11:45am etc; thus allowing a 15 minute gap between timeslots.

You might be thinking this feels like booking an appointment. There are similarities, although the difference is that an appointment typically admits one person at a time. Instead, time slots allow you to offer as many tickets as you wish for each slot.

Where we have seen time slots being used

There are many recent examples, including:

  • Entry to open-air events
  • Flu vaccination clinics
  • Store end of season sales
  • Yoga classes

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We offer ticketing solutions for all types of events including multi-day and time slot events.

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