The queue you don't stand in

A line at the entrance is a strange thing to hand people the moment they arrive, before they've had a single good experience of your event. Twenty minutes shuffling forward sets the mood for the whole day, and it's never the mood you were hoping for.

So here's the idea, and it's a simple one: keep the wait, get rid of the line.

Someone joins the queue from a link on their phone. Nothing to download, no account to set up. They get a text or a WhatsApp message telling them they're in and roughly where they stand, and then they're free to spend those minutes on something better — grab a coffee, find the people they came with, have a wander. When they're getting near the front, another message tells them to head over. They walk up, they walk in.

For your team it's barely any work. They move the queue along from a simple screen and the messages go out by themselves. And you can see what's actually been sent and received, which you'll be grateful for the first time someone insists they never got a thing.

The reason it works isn't complicated. It uses what people already have open on their phones — nearly everyone can get a text, and across most of the region nearly everyone's on WhatsApp. There's no "please install our event app," which is just as well, because nobody actually wants to install your event app.

There's a quieter win in it for you, too. A crowd that's spread comfortably around the venue is far easier to look after than a few hundred people pressed up against one set of doors. The crush eases off, and your front-of-house people spend the morning helping guests find their way rather than holding back a bottleneck.

A busy event always involves some waiting. Making people do it standing in a line is just a habit — and it's one worth letting go of.