Holovis has developed a social distancing app designed to help themed entertainment destinations re-open safely in the wake of COVID-19. The app features an attraction reservation and queue-management system with real-time proximity alerts, providing operators with instant insight into guest movements to avoid crowd hotspots.
Called Crowd Solo, Holovis is making the mobile app free to all single ticket admission destinations including theme parks, zoos, museums and cultural centers, and is now looking for interest and feedback from the industry to support further development.
Peter Cliff, Creative Director at Holovis explains: “We are committed to helping the industry that we love get back on its feet as quickly and as safely as possible. It looks likely that the need for some form of safe crowd management will be around for the foreseeable future meaning attractions and entertainment venues will have to adapt and learn to operate differently in order to give guests peace of mind and confidence to re-visit.
“We believe Crowd Solo could significantly assist with this process, whilst remaining socially responsible whilst creating safe places to visit. Based on informal conversations, our initial concepts have been positively received, so we are now ready to test market appetite more thoroughly. The basic app will be available in the next four to six weeks.”
Powered by the Holovis DeepSmarts data analytics engine, Crowd Solo visualizes the movements of guests so operators can continually monitor how effectively their facility is operating, especially around attraction loading hot spots. Heatmap data is viewed in real-time to help expand capacity, support staffing plans and manage attractions safely.
Guests will download the mobile app on their phones and use it as the only way to book attractions for themselves and their family throughout their visit. By connecting every guest, the data presents an exact ‘state of the park’, position. The real-time insights suggest optimal guest management strategies, so operators can instantly act on information to improve guest flow and avoid unwelcome hotspots by diverting guests to other areas of the park. With complete operator insight, situational awareness is maintained across the networked system.
Via the tracking capability, each guest will also be made aware of their group’s social distance metrics in relation to all other visitors, with the system providing both audible and vibration feedback responses to warn if guests are too close. This can also be gamified to add an element of fun to social distancing.
No new physical hardware or changes to site infrastructure are required to enable the Crowd Solo system, as it leverages a combination of advanced positional tracking techniques already inherent in BYOD devices connected to standard park operating systems.
Advanced features such as complete parkwide gamification, thermal imaging reports, ride popularity statistics, custom insight reports and integration with existing cashless payment methods are also part of the product road map as add-on features, making the app a potential portal for supporting the complete guest experience.
“Our design and software teams are passionate about wanting to contribute to the industry’s relaunch and feel this could be a game changing tool to help any entertainment or cultural centre accelerate reopening plans ready for when social distancing rules are relaxed,” continues Cliff.
“Crowd Solo will help operators move quickly to reach optimal, safe venue capacities, by being able to provide guests and operator teams with a highly adaptive tool to enable safe visiting, predict and manage guest movements, avoid unsafe queuing and generally help to deliver another great day out.”
Interested parties can email peter.cliff@holovis.com for more information.