Matt Wallsmith, South Florida Fair, West Palm Beach; Lynne Smith, TicketForce; Greg Flakus, GFS Strategies, and Daren Libonati, Daren M. Libonati Consulting, spoke on ticketing during IAFE. (VT Photo)
REPORTING FROM LAS VEGAS — The Maryland State Fair, Timonium, banned drones this year for the first time, while the Desert Empire Fair, Ridgecrest, Calif., and the California State Fair, Sacramento, hosted drone events, the latter during fairtime.
That divergence of reaction to the growth of drones, along with the varying opinions on the effectiveness and variances in cashless events, were two topics of concern during the International Association of Fairs & Expositions convention here in early December.
Brent Clark Palmer, manager of the Ridgecrest fair, helped host the Drone Festival in an open, desert location. “Our World Fairgrounds wasn’t the perfect space for drones,” he said of surrounding airports and businesses. Nevertheless, they were involved in the event which was the first state-sponsored drone event in California.
Interestingly, it was covered under the fair’s existing general liability insurance, he said, “like flying a kite.”
Palmer was definitely pro drones, noting their uses relative to the fairgrounds and agriculture, from surveying crops for water supply and data collection to herding cattle. There will be “drone artistes,” he said, quoting a statistic that 500,000 drones were expected to be sold this past Christmas.
Hosting the Drone Festival “was really, truly no big deal,” Palmer said. “Drones will probably be registered like cars and motorcycles soon.”
Rick Pickering, California State Fair, Sacramento; John Johnson, Hebron (Conn.) Harvest Festival; Brent Clark Palmer, Desert Empire Fair, Ridgecrest, Calif; and Bill Connolly, Maryland State Fair, Timonium. (VT Photo)
Bill Connolly, safety and security director for the Maryland State Fair, disagreed. He thinks they are dangerous in the wrong hands and cited his own statistics. “Two weeks ago, a drone crashed into the Giant Ferris Wheel in Seattle,” he said. “No one knows where it came from. You have to wonder if the drone has a weapon or destructive device attached."
He was also concerned about inexperienced operators, the location of drone operators, invasions of privacy issues and operators who ignore the rules in place. “Who accepts liability when an injury occurs?” he asked. Twenty-seven states now have varying pieces of legislation regarding drones.
Rick Pickering, manager of the California State Fair, hosted the first Drone Race at the fair. It was 18-months in the making, he said. Several times the Federal Aviation Administration said no. In fact, the fair’s own rental agreement says no drones are allowed on the fairgrounds when a lot of people are around.
But they ended up booking the event, using the soccer stadium for what became the state championships. They hosted time trials for two days, with eight drones on the course at any one time. It’s a highly technical event, each using private radio frequencies.
But ultimately, drone racing is about the personalities of the drone flyers, Pickering said. Those will be the new superstars. Practically speaking, he agreed drones are a boon to agriculture and public safety as well, able to dust crops and deliver defibrillators, survey real estate and job sites and control traffic.
“That’s why we did it, to showcase the technology,” Pickering said.
John Johnson Jr., Hebron (Conn.) Harvest Fair, brought a drone for display and talked about the technical aspects of flying. He referred attendees to the FAA’s knowbeforeyoufly.org site, one which is also on display at airports around the country, including the Las Vegas airport.
He personally uses a drone for fairgrounds layout and traffic control purposes. He noted they come with all sorts of cameras, but he prefers the GoPro camera which gives a high resolution image.
Drones are here to stay and embracing the technology was recommended by three out of four panelists. In fact, there is a million-dollar purse on the table for drone racing in New York. Australia is big time into drone racing.
“And know you can’t confiscate drones,” Johnson said.
GOING CASHLESS
Matthew Wallsmith, CFO, South Florida Fair, West Palm Beach, sang the praises of cashless events, saying the reporting aspects of the process gives the fair a quick look at trouble spots, a handle on the number of repeat visitors, a take on dwell time (where guests stop to look at something) and the number of devices used per hour. He has a heat map that shows traffic flow and can do zone analysis of the midway, kiddieland, the ag area, Yesteryear Village and the gates, thanks to the fair’s cashless system.
Using the Cisco Mobility Engine, he can draw zones on the grounds and the dashboard can track 50,000 devices at one time. If he needs to go above that number, he adds another server.
His newest endeavor, next year, will be the Social Connector via Facebook, where the fair can offer free WiFi to customers, but to get it, they have to go to the fair page and check in. Facebook will then return analytics of those customers to the fair.
Lynne Smith, TicketForce, cited the mobile evolution and the fact fair customers will do more and more on their mobile phones.
She recommended anyone looking at a new website get a responsive design, so that the contents shift to reflect the device used. “People need to buy tickets on their phone,” she said, noting the number who do so has grown to 20-30 percent of customers today, including 50 percent of those deemed millennials, many of whom are turning 35 this year.
Test your own website by trying to buy tickets to your fair on your phone, she suggested. As to redesign of the website, if someone wants to charge extra to optimize a website for mobile, “find a new web designer,” she said. “It’s just basic today. Mobile delivery is not new. It’s as necessary as print at home.”
Smith also talked about the growing use of push notifications. Remember texting is permission-based, she said. The push is instant permission if someone downloads the app. The venue offers location services on the phone to gain permission to push notifications out.
Greg Flakus, GFS Strategies, said the festival industry is three years into the cashless events strategy, well ahead of fairs. Some now issue wristbands when tickets are ordered which integrate added value for purchases on the grounds. The wristband is the ticket plus it is loaded with cash for use at the festival.
The system requires that vendors provide pricing and menus prior to the event, Flakus said. The menus are preloaded so the result is a tap and go, tapping once to order and a second time to have it charged to the wristband.
There is no end-of-night cash reconciliation, Flakus noted. It eliminates cash in the hands of employees.
On the downside, or upside depending on who is considering it, there is a service charge to customers who want money back at the end of the event. The breakage fee is often in the $2-$5 range, no matter the amount returned.
“It’s not good for fairs yet,” Flakus said, citing the number of vendors and new items involved year after year, but “by 2018, fairs will get into it. People don’t want to mess with cash.” As to wristbands replacing tickets, make it a collector wristband, something that can be a keepsake, he said. “This is coming.”
He recommended isolating an area to try it, like beer and wine, just so fairs get a toe in the water.
Daren Libonati, Daren M. Libonati Consulting, suggested that when going cashless, “you are all in or you’re out.” He has consulted on two major festivals in Las Vegas that used RFID technology. One issue is topping off. “You forget how much you’ve spent,” he said of customers, who can then end up at the concessions stand short of “cash” for the current purchase. It’s best to have a way they can top off the wristband or card at the stand. If they have to leave to go to another location to add money, the sale is lost and the customer is disgruntled.
The other issue is the breakage. Some customers are not happy with a fee to get the unused money back, but there is a cost to that service. Libonati said the issue facing the industry is making the process customer friendly.
Flakus said the lift in sales from going cashless depends on the audience. He cited a country music festival that had $34 per caps after going cashless, considerably more than precashless days, while the lift is less with EDM events.
He predicted “there is going to be a pioneer fair [going completely cashless]. Festivals are out of the box now.”
Interviewed for this story: Brent Clark Palmer, (760) 375-8000; Bill Connolly, (410) 252-0200; Rick Pickering, (916) 263-3247; John Johnson Jr., (860) 228-0892; Greg Flakus, (360) 573-7027; Lynne Smith, (480) 726-3581; Daren Libonati, (702) 813-5345; Matt Wallsmith, (561) 790-5205