Visitor attractions
Capacity management: one count for shop and front desk
Capacity management without overbooking: your online shop, front desk and resellers sell from one count, so the last place is only ever sold once.
· 4 min read
Your exhibition room holds eighty people. So you open sixty places online and keep twenty back for the front desk. On a rainy Sunday the online places are gone within an hour, while on a quiet Tuesday the front desk sits on empty ones. That is the problem capacity management solves: deciding how many people can come in, and applying that limit to all your points of sale at once.
Why two counts always go wrong
As long as you count online and at the desk separately, you have two bad options.
- You split the places in advance. Then one side has room left while the other is telling people you are full.
- You offer all of them on both sides. Then on a busy day you have a hundred tickets sold for eighty places, and you find out at the door.
The answer is not a better split but a single count. Every point of sale draws from the same stock, and the last ticket goes to whichever buyer gets there first.
One count per time slot or per event
In Passavo, the limit sits in one of two places.
- A time slot has its own number of places: Saturday 2 pm, thirty places. You create them under Sales → Time slots. See the guide to Time slots, or read how to spread the crowds in your museum.
- An event has the field Seats in total. That is one pool for all ticket types together: enter 220 for an adult and a child ticket, and you sell at most 220 tickets, in any proportion. See the guide to Events.
Your ticket shop and your front-desk till work from the same count. If you use resellers, their bookings go into the same capacity. Once the count runs out, your shop shows the event as sold out, and so does the tile on the till.
A Saturday in numbers
Take the 2 pm slot with thirty places, an hour before it starts:
| What | Places |
|---|---|
| Sold online | 20 |
| Sold at the front desk | 4 |
| Free tickets for guests | 2 |
| Someone is checking out right now | 2 |
| Still free | 2 |
If the buyer at checkout drops out, four places are free again, without anyone having to do anything. If they pay, two remain. The person at the desk and the visitor in the shop see the same number.
Mind the free tickets: they count, because guests take up a place too. Your count should say how many people will be there, not how many have paid.
What happens with the last place
Three people going for the last place at the same moment is the classic case. Two things make sure only one of them gets it.
- The check and the sale are one step. The system does not look first and book afterwards: the place is checked and taken in a single move. Anyone too late is told it is full, or how many places are left.
- Places are held during checkout. Ten minutes by default, and you choose anything between 5 and 30 minutes under Time to check out. If the visitor does not pay, the places come back on their own.
That is why a slot can briefly show as full while not everyone has paid yet. It sorts itself out as soon as the hold runs out.
Keeping places for walk-ins
A single count does not stop you from keeping room for the door. Two ways that work well:
- Set the capacity lower on purpose. Thirty places in the room, twenty-five on sale. On the day itself you raise the slot with Change capacity, and the five extra places go on sale right away.
- Close a slot. Close stops the sale, while people who already booked come as planned. That helps when you want to keep the last places for a school group that still has to confirm.
Going below what has already been sold is not possible for a time slot: the window refuses that number. So you never sell places that no longer exist.
Where your limit comes from
The number itself is your decision. For a room it is in your licence, for a guided tour the guide sets it, and for an outdoor site it is mostly about comfort. If you are unsure what applies to your venue, check with your local authority or fire service. There is more background under capacity management, and at the door, good access control helps.
What it costs
Time slots and the shared count are in every plan, including the free one. The front-desk till comes with Start (€9.00 a month) and up, resellers with Growth (€29.00 a month) and up. No amount per ticket is ever added. Compare the plans on the pricing page, or see what Passavo does for visitor attractions.
