One Wristband to Rule Them All: 3 Ways to Make Your Operation More Seamless

Common uses for wristbands that increase efficiency and optimize guest experience.

Simplifying the guest experience can be overwhelming when there are so many attractions, food and beverage, payment and access options to consider. Wristbands may sound old-fashioned, but the modern wristband is a terrific solution for not only streamlining your guests’ entrance into your facility, but also helping them more fully engage with everything your business has to offer.

Whether you use classic printed bands or the new silicone bands so nice folks keep them as souvenirs, wristbands are your guests’ personal keys to the entertainment kingdom, allowing them to access stored cash, credit cards, passes and personal information—all in one place.

Read on for three ways to maximize efficiency and guest experience using wristbands in your facility.

1. Store Value or Tokenized Tender

Just like a gift card or credit card, a wristband can enable secure access to a monetary value purchased, except this kind of “card” is a bit harder for your guest to lose. Like a gift card, this allows you to potentially increase revenue through “breakage”—value that is left on a gift card or gift certificate and never spent by the customer.

If you prefer not to deal with breakage and don’t want to set up a process to cash out guest value balances, you can also tokenize a wristband—which is a process of encoding a wristband with a unique credit card token to give guests access to their credit card as a tender type. Families and groups can all have their own wristband with a line of credit that originates from one central credit card, with spending limits set individually or for the group entirely. This means fewer disruptions to guests’ fun, and a more efficient operation for you since guests can make a one-time purchase, and then be free to enjoy attractions at their own pace.

In addition to monetary value, wristbands are a perfect way to house loyalty rewards or game winnings, passes, and attraction entitlements so that they can engage with any attraction, kiosk or sales counter in your facility without needing to carry their wallet or purse.

2. Make Access Control Easy

Wristbands provide several layers of access control capabilities. On the smallest scale, different colored wristbands act as simple cues for your staff when managing capacity or timed events. For example, timed jump sessions could use different colors to designate the session at play now. Monitors to can see at-a-glance who should be on your courts, and who should purchase additional time or move into other areas of the park. You could also differentiate birthday guests of honor or members throughout your park with specially colored or printed bands.

Barcoded wristbands or those embedded with chip technology (RFID) can be used in conjunction with turnstiles, scanners or other access control devices to track guest going in or out of your park or even individual attractions.

3. Better Member Identification and Security

In addition to access control, think of the additional layers of security that can be implemented by attaching member profiles to your wristbands. You could offer members the traditional card, but perhaps an upsell would allow them to purchase discounted daily admission or special event passes, or buddy passes with their wristband.

Printing the wristbands with guest details also allows you to easily and securely identify members of the same group or family—helping you ensure children are leaving with authorized caregivers and helping to keep your groups and parties together.

Like any other inventory item, you could issue a certain number of bands to a cashier with their daily till to keep track of those member sales, or you could add a layer of security by scanning the band with the guest’s picture being displayed at the point of entrance.

To fully realize the potential of wristbands in your facility or FEC, just remember that they can be used to create a more seamless experience anywhere a guest has to interact with a staff member. Whether you use them to identify member status or session time, or your guest uses them to make purchases, wristbands are as versatile as they are accessible.

Have questions about using wristbands in your park or FEC? Contact us at info@centeredgesoftware.com.