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Counting unticketed or unscanned visitors

Carlo Palazzi
$organization

Hello everyone,

At the RA we have some spaces that visitors can come into for free, without booking a ticket or having a membership card scanned. These include free galleries, displays, shops, cafes and courtyard. At the start of Covid, as a cost-saving measure, we turned off the motion sensors (managed by Intelligent Counting Ltd) we used for visitor counting. 

Now that we have removed some of the requirements to book before visiting, we are considering all options for tracking visitation in all our spaces, and wondering if anything more accurate/cheaper/with better Tessitura integration exists. 

How do you track unticketed visitors in your organisations? Do you encourage booking to ensure as many people as possible have ticketed attendances with an account?

So far it seems to us that for certain closed spaces manual counting by security guards will provide the most accurate count, but for more open spaces some kind of motion sensors will be necessary. 

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and discussing pros and cons!

Carlo

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  • $organization
    Hi Carlo-
     
    This is a great question and tricky to answer.
     
    At the MFA Boston, we use overhead video counters to track entry/exit into galleries and some other spaces.  For example we added sensors to all then doorways in our contemporary wing and can now understand the flow of visitors in and out of the space by door and relative to our overall attendance on a day.  The overhead counters have worked far better than wall mounted infrared counters in terms of accuracy.  The cost has gone down over the years, but the annual per sensor support adds up over time if you get a lot of sensors.  This is probably the approach we would take to if we had a larger free zone with galleries, shop, and theaters. 
     
    We used the auto-attend customization for all same-day ticket purchases since 99% of those people walk into the Museum.  We only have one free space which is outside of the area where a paid ticket is required.  The plan is to use an overhead sensor to track traffic.  For the main shop that is inside the museum, we do offer a “free zone” ticket during the holiday season.  That ticket is obtained at the ticket desk and counts towards our overall attendance.
     
    Matt
    __
     
    Matthew Murphy
    he/him/his
    Director, Member and Visitor Services
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
     
    The MFA is open to the public and most staff continue to work remotely.
     
     
     
Reply
  • $organization
    Hi Carlo-
     
    This is a great question and tricky to answer.
     
    At the MFA Boston, we use overhead video counters to track entry/exit into galleries and some other spaces.  For example we added sensors to all then doorways in our contemporary wing and can now understand the flow of visitors in and out of the space by door and relative to our overall attendance on a day.  The overhead counters have worked far better than wall mounted infrared counters in terms of accuracy.  The cost has gone down over the years, but the annual per sensor support adds up over time if you get a lot of sensors.  This is probably the approach we would take to if we had a larger free zone with galleries, shop, and theaters. 
     
    We used the auto-attend customization for all same-day ticket purchases since 99% of those people walk into the Museum.  We only have one free space which is outside of the area where a paid ticket is required.  The plan is to use an overhead sensor to track traffic.  For the main shop that is inside the museum, we do offer a “free zone” ticket during the holiday season.  That ticket is obtained at the ticket desk and counts towards our overall attendance.
     
    Matt
    __
     
    Matthew Murphy
    he/him/his
    Director, Member and Visitor Services
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
     
    The MFA is open to the public and most staff continue to work remotely.
     
     
     
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