As we look toward a season of haunted houses, corn mazes and holiday pop-ups, it’s important for event managers to consider how to organize their crowd flow to maximize ticket sales across the duration of the event and avoid bottlenecks at check-in. 

Enter timed-access ticketing, a feature on Ticketbud that enables event organizers to allow entry to a specific number of ticket holders during allocated time slots. This prevents everyone from showing up at once, which can cause issues with capacity restrictions, create long delays and lead to having to ask attendees to come back at another time. It also ensures the entire event runs more smoothly, creating a safe and enjoyable experience for all.

Benefits of timed access for attendees:

• Convenience. Attendees get to choose a time and day that works for them. 
• Peace of mind. Knowing their time is secured allows attendees to calmly arrive for their booking at the designated time. 
• Easy entry. Attendees don’t have to waste time lining up early.
• Enhanced experience. Because there are limits on bookings per time slot, attendees get to have a better event experience without the overcrowding that can happen at popular times.

Benefits of timed access for event organizers:

• Sell more tickets early. Attendees will buy sooner to ensure they secure their desired time/day. Capacity constraints at different entry times triggers a scarcity motive, which may influence people to buy in fear that space is running out. 
• Maximize sales. As spots sell out, bookings will spill over to available times. This is much less likely to happen at events without timed access because people can’t see that limits have been reached until it’s too late.  
• No overcrowding. Timed access helps organize the flow of people, particularly at larger events and festivals that have multiple attractions, reducing congestion, wait times, and potential risks.
• Predictable staffing. You don’t have to worry about understaffing and overwhelming staff when you know exactly the number of people to plan for.
• Guarantee a positive experience. The success of an event can impact an organization’s reputation. Overcrowding or long wait times can lead to chaos, accidents, or negative incidents that may harm an event’s image, result in legal liability, or deter future attendees. Timed-access ticketing limits these risks and ensures a smoother customer experience.
• Customize communication. This is useful if you have to close the event for a period of time for an unexpected reason, or need to share alternative access or preparation information. This also gives organizers a mechanism for tracing exactly who was at their event and when in case organizers needed to contact attendees that attended during a certain time period.

“The Ticketbud team was a great support helping us create timed access ticket programming with scheduled drive-thru times. By limiting the number of vehicles able to enter each hour, attendees could secure their time and plan their evening without everyone turning up at once. This new programming helps us distribute and maximize tickets over our five-week event.”  

Teri Smart, VP of Marketing at Forefront Networks, which produces the Austin Trail of Lights.

Below you can see an example event pages offering multiple time slots for events. Check out this video for a more detailed view on how organizers can set up their profiles and events with timed-access ticketing.

Ticketbud’s event page calendar makes multi-day timed-entry ticketing much easier for ticket buyers to navigate to find the convenient date and time they need.

To learn more about working with Ticketbud visit the How It Works page.