Capacity crowd control within multi-room venues

[Andrew]

Following a recent experience at a popular club, there has been concern voiced that within the club's 4 'rooms' there was not an even distribution of patrons, and some felt "packed in like sardines".

The club was operating at capacity and this problem has been brewing for a while...

In contrast, another popular club stops patrons going from one room to the other by security because the desination room was too full, and this also offends people; although not as much.

Is there a better was to handle this situation?

Is the club legally bound to control internal crowd distribution?

[Q-Systems]

Q-Systems has developed a capacity control system that is able to track individual room capacities.Infra-red sensors above all doorways networked to a PC or display unit is 98% accurate in lowlight conditions.

I feel capacity control is an issue that nightclub owners and operators will need to be more sensative to in the future. The club fire that killed 25 in Lima, Peru or the one in Gothenburg Sweden that killed 63 have shed light on the need for accurate capacity control, clickers aren't good enough anymore.

Comments welcome!

Richard Berg

[Andrew]

I went to your website and noticed that you have a product called Q-BAR installed in the SOUND-BAR, Chicago’s newest upscale nightclub. I have to comment on the size of that venue - it is such a huge place!

[David]

Andrew:

There's nothing that I like more then a crowded club. But, there is a point that it becomes too crowded and is uncomfortable.

I have ventured out and into many a club like you describe. I think that with today's trends towards smaller venues, with more entertainment options, within a given space, are here to stay. I hardly ever see the monstrous clubs of 10,000 plus square feet anymore. The main footprint of the building might still be 10,000 square feet plus, but the interior is divided into smaller, more manageable, sub-venues. Take a look at Polyesters in Denver or the Excalibur in Chicago and on and on.

From a managers point of view, this type of usage allows you to open or close different rooms, as needed, to keep the clubs appearence full. Granted, if the management doesn't control the amount of people in these smaller rooms, they can get very crowded. Most building codes that I'm aware of wouldn't allow a single ingress/egress to the rooms. There would have to be at least one entrance door in and one exit door out to the exterior of the building in case of a fire or an emergency.

The idea of having a "Door Monitor" at each room is a solution, but a costly one at that. More employees means more FICA, insurance and so on.

I guess if I owned or ran a club that had this opportunity, I would take each room separately and try to find out why one is more popular than the other. I would then look at expanding those that are normally at capacity and add furniture or shrink those that are normally vacant.

I hope that this makes sense?

[Andrew]

It makes very good sense, thanks David

It is interesting that you say this is the era for smaller clubs..I usually end up in the smaller rooms of larger clubs, preferring the more intimate feel (and usually better music, for me anyway)

I suspect we all like crowded clubs, especially the club owners amongst us!
:D

[Q-Systems]

The idea with the above mentioned Q-Flow Capacity Control system is to reduce the "clickers" at the doors and the insurance and taxes associated with them. At a cost of $3000 per door, it shouldn't take but a few months to recap your investment, and our counting modules never date the waitresses or talk back to the managers.

Thanks,

Richard Berg

[Bart-Man]

We had a similar problem.

One room had a 175 cap (Tavern area). Another 50 cap (Tables and fireplace). Another 180 cap (patio). And another 240 cap (the nightclub portion). Well, the entire swarm of patrons always migrated to the patio and nightclub portion by midnight. The fire marshall was completely up my a** about this. We were at capacity by midnight and not a soul was in the table room (completely wasted space!)

A la Dave, we also instituted an enegry level in the other rooms to keep patrons there and even attract them there so that the entire capacity of the entire club was allowable and safe.

What we did:

Shooter girl (major eye candy) in the tavern and table room. Beer station optional.

Implemented video games that required several players in the table room (2 Golden Tees, electronic darts, Pac-man and Galaga). Stand up tables for beers. Dimmer lighting, etc. What was once considered only a place to sit and eat became a party area as consistent with the nightclub (save dancing).

What would work at your facility is beyond me. Know your customers. BUT, work with what you got first. Look at it simply...you need to keep patrons in a certain area. We took what was the draw at the club portion and did what we could to exetend that into our other rooms. Give them a reason to go there or stay there. The possibilities are as limited as your imagination, but if you have a goal, man, everything is doable!

Oh, yeah...we also brought in an extra $800-1200/month in vending per month on the leased video games!!! (and thats only 50% of the quarters dropped).