Visitor counting for festivals

Festival visitor counting from Bumbee Labs gives organisers anonymous numbers on festival attendance, zone occupancy and visitor flows across the grounds, measured with LiDAR sensors and Wi-Fi. Bumbee Labs is the company behind the only footfall method in Europe approved by a data protection authority.

How many people are on the festival grounds, and where?

Our ticket system only counts the gate. What happens inside the festival grounds?

A ticket scan counts each admission once. Festival visitor counting covers the whole grounds: how the crowd divides between stages, where queues build, how long people stay and how flows shift hour by hour. LiDAR and Wi-Fi count festival attendance for each zone.

Which festival area is about to get too full, and can we know in time?

Occupancy per zone shows how full each stage area, entrance and food court is. The Crowd Alert add-on works in near real time and sends an alert when a zone reaches the limit you have set, so crews can act before the area is saturated. See zone occupancy and what the add-on delivers.

What do the safety plan and the sponsors need from the numbers?

The municipality and the police want last year’s figures for our crowd management plan. What can we give them?

Last year’s zone occupancy and flow data give your safety organisation figures to work from when it draws up the crowd management plan: how many people were in each area, at which hours, and which routes carried the pressure. The figures are input to the plan, and the plan stays your organisation’s responsibility. See visitor flows by area and hour.

What do we show the sponsors so that next year’s festival sells?

After the festival, attendance, dwell time and flows for each zone show which sponsor areas drew visitors and how long they stayed there. Organisers use that report to sell next year’s festival, with this year’s figures for each area set beside last year’s.

Can queues and an open field be measured too?

Queues at the food stalls, bars and toilets pull people away from the stages. Where do they build?

Wi-Fi and LiDAR measure waiting time and queue length for each zone across the grounds, by area and hour. The figures are ready the day after, so staff for the next festival day can be moved to the stall or toilet block where the line grew.

We have no fixed infrastructure. Can a field be measured?

Yes. The setup needs no fixed infrastructure: portable sensors and the connectivity already on site go in for the build-up and come out with the teardown, scoped to the festival footprint. LiDAR covers outdoor and low-light areas, and the data stays with you after the tents come down.

Which other festival questions come up?

• A free city festival has no tickets. How many came? Mobile network data covers wide outdoor areas beyond the reach of Wi-Fi, and event impact shows whether the festival lifted the wider centre.
• The Christmas market gets overfull and entrances have to close for a while. Where and when does the crowd build? We would start with Wi-Fi and 3D sensors at the entrances.
• The race and the crowd along the course: where do spectators stand, and how do the streets fill? Mobile network data and Wi-Fi are where we would start.
• How dense is the crowd in front of the stage, and when should it be redirected? It is the same capacity question as at standing areas in arena crowd flows.
• Did the new stage layout work? Measuring flows, dead corners and entrances the same way before and after the change answers that.
• How many are still sleeping on the campsite? Tell us how the camping areas are laid out.
• Which times and stages drew the crowd? Occupancy and dwell time per stage and hour show which slots and days worked, as input to next year’s programme.