Entry does not break down because of the total number of guests, but because of the peak shortly before the programme starts. If you derive the number of scanners from the number of visitors, you will therefore systematically plan too tight. The peak can be calculated in advance, with three numbers you already have.
How many lanes do I need at the entrance?
The number of lanes follows from the entry peak, not from the number of visitors. You need three values: the expected number of visitors, the period in which most of them arrive, and the share that arrives in this period. You know the share from your last events, or you set an assumption and check it in the dashboard on the night. Guests in the peak divided by the minutes gives you the guests per minute who have to get through the check. At five seconds per guest, one lane handles twelve people per minute.
A worked example: a concert with 2,400 guests, doors at 6 pm, programme start at 8 pm. Suppose two thirds of the guests arrive in the forty minutes between 6:40 pm and 7:20 pm. That is 1,600 people in forty minutes, so 40 guests per minute. For that you need at least four lanes, sensibly five, so that one lane can fail without the queue coming to a standstill straight away.
How long does a scan really take?
Scanning a ticket itself takes a moment. In planning, we nevertheless allow four to six seconds per guest, because something happens before and after: unlocking the phone, finding the ticket, shifting the backpack, putting on the wristband. These seconds decide the queue, not the technology.
The three most common mistakes at the gate
Too little space in front of the check. If the queue backs up into a pavement, no lane works properly any more, because guests cannot line up in parallel. Plan the area in front of the gate to be at least as wide as the number of your lanes times two metres.
Wristbands in the wrong place. Putting on the wristband takes longer than the scan. If one person does both, the time per guest doubles. Separate the steps: scan first, then the wristband two steps further on.
No plan for special cases. Guest list, press, exchanged tickets, flat phone batteries. A single special case blocks a lane for several minutes. Set up a separate resolution lane that exists for exactly that. The regular lanes keep running in quick mode, while the resolution lane works in confirmation mode.
What you see yourself on the night
In the tickee dashboard, entry is tracked live: checked-in guests, capacity utilisation, and which entrance is moving quickly and where it is backing up. If one lane falls clearly behind, that is almost always a sign of a blocked special case and not of a network problem. You see it before the guests notice. And afterwards you see how high your peak really was. That is the number for the next event.
If you would like to work through your numbers together: we will take 30 minutes and go through your specific site.