The event was preceded by 2 years of preparations
The main organisers of the event Jaroslav Vavřina, Michal Šesták and Martin Cieslar already had a lot of experience with biker events due to the fact that they had been organising the annual Prague Harley Days since 2013. However, this event could not be compared to what they had expected for the brand’s 115th birthday.
“At Prague Harley Days, we managed to check people in manually – bikers pulled out a paper ticket, we checked it and let them into the premises. However, we knew that a lot more people would be coming to the anniversary celebrations where a similar approach to checking people in wouldn’t work”.
“Before a biker manages to park their motorcycle, turn off the engine, find their paper ticket in his leather jacket, greet their friends at the gate, fire up the engine again and drive into the premises, it can take several minutes. We calculated that there would be queues of people and motorbikes at the gates of the exhibition centre that would probably cause us to block traffic in Prague”.
Which is why two years before the anniversary, the organisers drove around to similar events abroad in search of inspiration. In the end, they decided that ticketing would be solved using mobile technology.
The solution was a QR code on the tickets
“We wanted visitors at the gate to not have to get off their motorcycle at all. In order to quickly prove their identity, they received a visitor’s bracelet and then continued on their way. This is why we decided to put a QR code on the tickets so that members of staff could read it using a mobile phone and bikers could immediately put on their visitor’s bracelet and be let into the premises”.
The target group for Harley Davidson is men aged 50 or older. Therefore, Cieslar and Šesták expected that the visitors of the celebration would need to prepare themselves for this technological change well in advance. And so, with plenty of time to spare, they launched an e-shop with tickets, wrote an informational decal for visitors, and sent everyone a series of e-mails explaining how electronic check-in would work.
“It was clear to us that not all bikers would have smartphones with which they could simply show their tickets on the display. We were counting on some people showing their phone while others would show a printed ticket. However, checking tickets using a QR code in both cases would still have been faster than manually checking every ticket”.
The solution was a QR code on the tickets
Two applications and phones from Samsung
In order to best motivate bikers to come to the event with an e-ticket on their smartphones, Harley Davidson in cooperation with Juicymo developed a mobile application that visitors could download for free. They had their e-tickets uploaded into this application where they could also find the event itinerary, a map of the premises, and tips on biker trips they could take in the area. Another mobile application was created at the same time that was used to verify the QR code on the tickets.
It was also necessary to equip event organisers with mobile phones. This was handled by Samsung, who lent Harley Davidson 100 smartphones. Management of these smartphones was provided by System4u – the only certified partner of Samsung Knox, a mass mobile phone management system in the Czech Republic.
“By using Samsung Knox, we didn’t even have to see these phones. Samsung just sent us IMEI device codes and we set them up remotely. Once the phone was turned on, event organisers would see the Harley Davidson logo with the 115th anniversary inscription on it. We set up a wallpaper for them that had a biker theme and also set up the mobile ticketing app, which we regularly updated remotely. The organisers simply turned on their phones and everything was set up for them”.
Petra Holubcová, System4u Marketing Manager
Convenient management of all phones
The Samsung Knox mobile phone management system came in handy for Cieslar and Šesták. In an easy-to-use console, both organisers were able to see exactly where other individual organisers were standing and what their workloads were like so that they could appropriately allocate their people and prevent long queues from forming.
“We brought power banks to the organisers with a heavier workload so that their phones wouldn’t die on them. We could stand in one place and have a clear overview of all our people around the premises. 60 organisers were located directly at the exhibition centre whilst we had others posted at OMV petrol stations and several others posted at the airport. We managed to co-ordinate our people in such a way that no long queues formed anywhere, and in moments when the ‘going got tough’, bikers waited for just a few minutes at most”.
What’s more, right before the official start of the event, System4u demonstrated its customer support readiness.
“On Friday evening, we found out that the ticketing application had disappeared on some of our phones and damaged the devices’ hardware – the Samsung Knox system security chips had been damaged. Luckily we had spare phones and the System4 guys were hard at work all night so that as soon as Saturday morning came around, everything would be back up and running smoothly”.
The next event will once again feature mobile technology
The organisers of the event were so excited about how well this system worked that they will be using it again at this year’s Prague Harley Days.
“I have to say that this solution met our expectations 100%. Whenever I imagine us checking in all of our visitors manually, I’m certain that we wouldn’t even have been able to manage it all within the 4 days that the event took place. With this method, we managed it all thanks to our overview, and the longest queues really ended up being just a few minutes. For the next event, we will be using the same applications, the same phones, and the same system. We only plan to make minor tec
The ideal solution for huge events
Are you also holding an event and wish to check in your visitors using a mobile app? Write us at info@system4u.com or call us at 543 210 522.
