Whether you manage an event space, arena, or stadium, on the day of your event, you’re focused on making sure your guests are enjoying themselves. To do so, you have the responsibility to ensure that health and safety risks are properly managed for all people on your property, including staff, contractors, and guests.
Crowd management—also known as crowd control—is the practice of managing large crowds to prevent crowd crushes, fights involving drunk and disorderly people, and riots.
Successful crowd management begins with the foundation of three primary strategies: enhanced communication, task management, and leveraged data to make informed decisions.
“Mob mentality” is the common phrase applied to the phenomenon of an individual’s own perceptions being overridden when they find themselves in large crowds. Depending on the crowd, behavior can become irrational and spontaneous, potentially leading to dangerous outcomes for guests and employees.
Developing crowd management strategies can help to ensure that large gatherings of people are controlled in an orderly and problem-free manner. Without crowd management, events can be put at high risk, which may result in injury, destruction of property, and other emergencies.
To implement a successful crowd management strategy, you should consider:
Maybe most importantly, your plan needs to remain flexible to address the specific situations that arise. Flexibility is only possible when you establish the following three crowd management strategies as your foundation.
Nothing works without effective communication with patrons and employees. If you’re not communicating through multiple channels, you can’t gain valuable insight at the speed you need to resolve a fight, riot, or other related incident.
You can effectively communicate with crowds through:
Sending an instant message—either as an SMS (text) message, shortcode, or through a mobile messaging platform such as WhatsApp—is proven to be one of the most effective ways to quickly communicate with a member of your team. Why? It’s faster than a phone call (and much faster than submitting a request through a web form).
With more than 2 billion users on the platform (and projected to continue growing), WhatsApp integration is essential for any instant messaging software on your list. Incorporating it into your communication tools allows you to reach a much wider audience than if you were to communicate solely through standard SMS.
One of the best ways to manage crowd flow is to communicate with your guests through signage. Why? As they move through the facility, instead of looking down at their phones and potentially running into others, they can simply find the information they are looking for on a sign.
Put important information in key locations so that your guests can find a map, restroom, seating, food and beverages, and exits.
Make sure to include QR codes so guests can bring this information with them or access more information than the signage space allows.
Live mapping software allows you to see a real-time map of your venue, which can be useful for a variety of purposes, including:
Using this information, you can improve the event layout, plan future events, and better monitor areas where incidents occur more frequently.
If a crowd becomes unmanageable, dispatch the proper personnel immediately using a task management process:
When you have software that collects data and makes data analysis easy, you no longer need to rely on gut feelings. Instead, you can transform that data into vital information for informing emergency plans.
Data can help you:
To collect accurate historical data, you need the right systems to easily prompt and accept the required data. You need an integrated system.
Successful crowd management begins with the foundation of three primary strategies: enhanced communication, task management, and leveraged data to make informed decisions. To accomplish this, you need an integrated system that supports these efforts.
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