Guest post written by Cameron Connelly, Content Marketing Intern, The Sports Facilities Companies.
In an article featured in the January 1937 edition of “Popular Science Monthly” was a new device that used infrared beams to count cars passing by on a highway. This device was used to find the total number of vehicles that passed by a particular spot on a highway each hour, day, week, or month. Today, these infrared beams are used in a device called a digital counter which provides sports facilities and recreation centers with useful data on how many people walk through their doors and where they spend most of their time. In this article, I will cover a few of the reasons why it’s a great idea to implement this technology in your recreation or sports tourism venue.
Event Organizers and Sponsorships
By using door counters to track the number of guests that enter your facility you can keep an accurate record of how many people attended a tournament or event. Event organizers and tournament sponsors are looking to get their name out to as many people as possible and you can use the data you collected at previous events and tournaments to provide prospective sponsors and organizers with accurate head counts of those events to show them the potential impact. You can also track which areas of the facility get the most traffic and shift sponsor activation those areas to increase exposure.
Tracking Peak Times and Non-Peak Times at Your Sports Facility
Without a door counter system, you must rely on your staff’s observations to determine your peak hours. A door counter system can take the assumptions or guesswork out of it and give you precise data that shows when your facility has the most guests. You can then plan your facility’s program schedule around this information or adjust your staffing schedule accordingly. For example, if you find out that your facility has very few guests weekday mornings, then you can lower the number of staff required to be there for those days and times. You also can develop programming to draw members during these non-peak times. If there is an activity or program that your facility offers that requires a lot of preparation or set up then you can schedule those activities to occur during the off hours. This way you can provide the community with all the activities that they want without interrupting any of the main events.
Optimizing Cleaning Schedules
In relation to staff scheduling, you can use a door counter over the entrance to the bathrooms and set it to send an alert when the counter reaches a specific number. Then once that alert comes through you can have the cleaning crew clean the bathrooms and check to make sure that they are stocked with toilet paper, paper towels, and soap. By having the cleaning crew schedule their cleaning based on the number of uses you can keep the restrooms cleaned and stocked more efficiently.
The Sports Facilities Companies can help you at every step and every stage of the sports facility development process. Contact us or call us today at 727-474-3845.
