A timed entry ticketing system sells admission in time slots, each with a capacity cap, so that arrivals are spread across the day instead of bunching at opening time. The guest chooses a slot at checkout, receives a ticket with that slot on it and is scanned in during the window. The venue sees in real time how many people are in each slot and in the building, and uses the fill-rate figures to reshape slots, prices and staffing for the next season.
How timed entry works
Timed entry adds one field to a ticket: an arrival window. The checkout shows a calendar of dates and, for each date, a set of slots with places remaining. When a slot reaches its cap it closes for online sale, and the admissions desk sees the same count, so walk-ups cannot push a slot over the limit without someone choosing to allow it.
The ticket, by email or in a mobile wallet, carries the date, the slot and a QR code. At the gate the scanner checks three things: that the code is genuine, that it has not already been used, and that the current time falls inside the slot’s window, usually with a grace period either side that the venue sets and the operator can override.
Attractions use the model for different reasons. National museums with free admission use timed tickets to control numbers; the Natural History Museum’s admissions policy recommends booking a free ticket to guarantee entry and admits walk-ins only when capacity allows, and its ticketing terms say late arrivals may be refused entry. Soft play centres and ice rinks use fixed sessions because the room or the ice has to be cleared.
Setting capacity per slot
Capacity per slot is not the same as building capacity. Building capacity is the number of people who can be inside at once, set by the fire risk assessment, the operator’s own safety limits and plain comfort. Slot capacity is the number allowed to arrive in a given window, and it has to be derived from how long people stay.
Start with the number you can have inside at one time, take off a margin for staff, contractors and anyone in the building without a ticket, then divide by the number of slots that fit inside an average dwell time. A gallery that can hold 600 people, where visitors stay about two hours and arrivals are sold in 30-minute slots, has four slots inside the building at any moment. Each slot can therefore carry about 150 arrivals before the building fills, and a working cap of 120 leaves room for guests who stay longer than average, for pass holders who did not book, and for the override at the desk.
Three groups complicate the arithmetic. Pass holders and members often expect to arrive without a slot; some venues reserve a share of each slot for them, others ask them to book a free slot, and the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition gives Members priority access without a booking. The pass side of this is covered in what pass software must do beyond single bookings. School and group bookings arrive in blocks and should be booked against a slot, not around it, and walk-ups need a reserved share of the morning slots.
Sessions with a hard end, such as soft play and ice, are simpler. Capacity per session is the room’s limit, and dwell time is the session length. Everyone Active’s Bracknell soft play runs 90-minute sessions that must all be pre-booked, with bookings open up to 14 days ahead. Freedom Leisure’s Stour Centre runs 90-minute soft play sessions and lets a booking move to a different time up to an hour before it starts.
Slot length by venue type
| Venue type | Typical slot | Capacity set by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soft play | 90-minute sessions, often with a gap for cleaning | Room limit, adults counted separately | Many centres pre-book every session; weekends and school holidays fill first |
| Museums and galleries | Short arrival window, stay as long as you like | Building limit divided by dwell time | Free timed tickets at national museums; paid exhibitions on their own slots |
| Theme parks | Dated ticket with a park-wide cap for the day | Park capacity and ride throughput | Slots used for individual rides, shows and peak arrivals |
| Ice rinks | Fixed-length public session with resurfacing between | Ice area and skate hire stock | Session end is hard; late arrivals lose time rather than roll over |
| Trampoline parks | Sessions sold by the hour | Court count and safety ratios | Waiver and safety briefing add to arrival time |
Pricing by slot, no-shows and moving guests
Once slots exist, they can carry different prices. A quiet 15:00 slot on a Tuesday can be cheaper than a 10:30 slot on a Saturday in August, and the difference nudges guests toward the slots the venue wants to fill. Look for pricing by slot, day type and date range that the venue sets in the back office, and for slot prices to flow through to passes and group rates.
No-shows are the second reason slots matter. A slot that sells out online and admits 90 per cent of its buyers has wasted 10 per cent of a scarce resource. A system that lets guests move their own booking up to a cut-off, as the Stour Centre does an hour before a session, converts some of those no-shows into a later arrival rather than a loss. Where no-show rates are measured and stable, a small overbooking allowance on sold-out slots is reasonable provided the building cap still holds; where they are not measured, overbooking is a guess.
Moving guests between slots also happens at the gate. A family that arrives 40 minutes late for a 10:00 slot can be admitted into the 10:30 slot if it has places. The scanner should show the remaining capacity of the current and next slots so the decision takes a second.
Scanning at the gate and reporting on fill rates
Each scan records the ticket, the slot, the time and the gate, and that feed is what makes attendance in real time possible. A floor manager who can see 412 people inside against a limit of 600, with 118 due in the next slot, decides about a second gate or the walk-up queue on numbers rather than by counting heads.
The reports that matter afterward are few. Fill rate per slot, scanned divided by capacity, shows which slots to shrink, grow or re-price. Sell-through lead time shows how far ahead each slot sells out, which drives when to open sales and when to release reserved walk-up places. No-show rate per slot sets the overbooking allowance. Walk-up share tells the venue whether its reserved share is right. A worked Saturday for the gallery above looks like this.
| Slot | Capacity | Pre-sold | Walk-up | Scanned | Fill rate | No-shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 | 120 | 118 | 2 | 109 | 91% | 11 |
| 10:30 | 120 | 120 | 0 | 112 | 93% | 8 |
| 11:00 | 120 | 120 | 0 | 115 | 96% | 5 |
| 12:00 | 120 | 86 | 22 | 101 | 84% | 7 |
| 13:00 | 120 | 71 | 18 | 83 | 69% | 6 |
| 15:00 | 100 | 64 | 11 | 70 | 70% | 5 |
The morning slots sold out online and still lost 5 to 11 arrivals each, so a 5 per cent overbooking allowance on those three slots would have been safe, with four full slots inside at once putting 480 people in a building rated for 600. The 13:00 and 15:00 slots never filled and were carried by walk-ups, which is the case for a lower price at those times or for releasing more of them to group bookings. A season of tables like this is what turns timed entry from a crowd-control measure into a revenue plan.
What VenueOra does here
VenueOra sells timed-entry admissions as sessions with capacity and buffer time: a calendar of sessions, capacity by session with buffer time before and after, bookings that can be moved to another session, and session and daily capacity reports. Tickets go out by email and to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet with a unique QR code; QR check-in at the door rejects a used ticket. See how this fits a museum’s year on the museums and galleries page. For the wider system, see what attraction management software covers and what can be branded in a white-label checkout.
Sources
- Natural History Museum, Our Visitor Admissions Policy for free timed tickets and walk-ins.
- Natural History Museum, Ticketing terms and conditions of sale for late arrival.
- Natural History Museum, Wildlife Photographer of the Year for Member priority access.
- Everyone Active, Bracknell Leisure Centre soft play for 90-minute pre-booked sessions.
- Freedom Leisure, The Stour Centre soft play for 90-minute sessions and moving a booking.