What we can learn from the Dr. Phillips Center about reopening safely
Live events venues have seen success in reopening with the right technology, tools, and protocols to ensure the safety of both guests and employees.
One of the venues leading the way is the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, Florida. The Dr. Phillips Center recently implemented the True Tickets service to enable secure contactless digital ticketing for their safe, socially distant events, but that is only one of the many steps they have taken on their journey to reopening amidst the pandemic.
I recently spoke to Nick Smith, Senior Director of Ticketing Services and Business Systems at the Dr. Phillips Center, about what they’ve done to improve health and safety inside and outside the venue, their plans for the coming year, and what other venues can learn about safely reopening.
Matt: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced while reopening?
Nick: We’ve done everything as carefully and as seriously as we can to keep everyone safe, including some heavily manual processes.
When people buy tickets using the seating map, we don’t have technology that will take seats off the map once certain tickets are purchased. If you buy seat 101, there’s nothing that prevents a stranger from choosing 102 and ending up right next to you.
So we developed a protocol, a manual process, to make sure every person has the requisite social distancing. We recently did 15 performances of the Nutcracker, which amounted to about 8,700 tickets, and maybe 3,000–4,000 different orders. It was incredibly time consuming to do that all manually but it gave us peace of mind that everyone was properly distanced.
When we developed an alternative performance space in our front yard, we created a more efficient system: a grid of boxes, all socially distanced, with up to five seats per box. No matter how many seats you buy, that box is taken out of inventory, so that helps take some of the manual work out of it.
But we’ve been doing all this work knowing we can only get 25% of the capacity in the house per CDC and local guidelines. That makes it very challenging not only for our bottom line but any of the organizations that come through that are used to 3,000 seats per show, and now we’re telling them we can sell 500 and that’s it.
One of the safety measures you took was to adopt contactless digital ticketing. Why was that part of your reopening efforts?
For customer and staff safety, more than anything else. Once Covid started, we made the decision to disable any printed tickets. Our staffing levels are down and we wanted to take as much of a hands-off approach as possible, to be as contactless as we can be.
Now we have the peace of mind that nothing is transmitted from one hand to another. But contactless ticketing is also a time saver — it makes the delivery of tickets more seamless and it’s easier to service those customers.
It’s also about having the flexibility to identify who’s actually using the tickets. Taking a look at what happens with each ticket from when it’s purchased to when it’s used is critical for us, not only with Covid and safety, but with ticket scalpers and other initiatives down the line.
How did your patrons react to the shift to digital ticketing?
A lot of venues are hypersensitive about their customers, as they should be. Some may think their customers are averse to change and they have to have that hard ticket in their hand
But at least in our experience, it was the opposite. We were doing maybe 60–70% print at home tickets, but when we switched to digital, we saw quick adoption. People have evolved and can navigate the purchase path and the use of their tickets without a piece of paper.
What advice would you give other venues that are working to return?
First and foremost is safety, safety, safety.
But the advice that I would give is don’t sit on your hands. If you can do something, try to do something. Back in March, when the pandemic really started rolling and we started shutting down, I had the thought that it would probably pass in three months at most, and we would be back before we started our Broadway series in September, like we always do. We all know how that turned out.
It wasn’t until June or July that we said, hey, let’s think our way out of this, let’s try to develop something. And we started looking around at what other organizations were doing and we borrowed what we could and did what we needed to do to reopen.
It’s better to fail in a blaze of glory than to just wither away doing nothing. We’ve taken every possible scenario that was presented to us and have tried to make sure that we’re doing this in a safe and conscious way, and I think we’re doing a great job.
What has it been like to reopen and host performances again?
It’s amazing what we were able to accomplish in such a short time. At that first show, I was really nervous about seeing people come back. At first I was thinking they’re going to come in here and this isn’t going to be the same, they’re not going to like it.
Our guests have been 100% behind us the whole time. They’re leaving with smiles on their faces. You see what the arts does for people, even in limited capacity. It’s oxygen.
To see people coming back after we have reopened, even in a limited capacity and knowing that they’re going to come back because they missed us so much, it’s great. It’s not what it was, but we’ll get there and I’m hopeful, I’m optimistic that it won’t be long. I feel very fortunate to be able to be doing what we’re doing right now.
What’s your outlook for live events in 2021? What challenges will we face, what reasons are there for optimism?
The evolving CDC guidelines and local and state government advice on what we can and can’t do will definitely be a consideration that everyone needs to keep an eye on, because obviously safety is our number one concern.
I’m definitely optimistic. We have to be prepared to pivot on a dime, but once everybody gets vaccinated, I think that’s going to go a long way toward making people feel safe and comfortable being together, and we can start to break down those barriers that we’ve needed. We’re continuing programming inside and outside the building, and we’re going to do whatever it is we can to adhere to the advice of the health professionals, manage capacity, and put on great performances.
Even if it’s only 500 for this performance, maybe it’s 1,000 next time, then 1500, and maybe the next time it’s a sell out. We’re going to get there, hopefully by the summer.
Thanks, Nick, for taking the time to share your story. To catch a glimpse of some of the incredible experiences the Dr. Phillips Center is putting on, visit their Twitter account, @DrPhillipsCtr.
