Guide · Operations
Timed entry or open sessions?
This is the decision that shapes everything else: your staffing, your queues, your average spend and how the busiest day of the year feels. It is worth making deliberately rather than inheriting.
What each one actually is
Open admission means people arrive when they like and stay as long as they like. You sell a ticket to the place, not to a time.
Timed entry means people book a slot. Sometimes they can stay all day once in, sometimes the slot is the visit. The important part is that you control when they arrive.
Almost every argument about the two is really an argument about one thing: whether you can afford to be surprised.
Timed entry does not reduce how many people come. It changes when they arrive.
If your problem is that everyone turns up between ten and midday on a Saturday, timed entry is the answer. If your problem is that not enough people turn up at all, it is not.
The case for timed entry
- The peak stops being a crisis. Arrivals are spread by design rather than by luck, so the car park, the counter and the cafe cope.
- You can staff to a known number. The single biggest cost saving, and the one venues underestimate. Knowing Saturday's 2pm slot has 40 people booked is worth a great deal more than hoping.
- You get the money before the weather. Pre-booked and paid means a wet Saturday is survivable.
- You learn what sells. Slot-level data tells you which times earn and which never fill, which is what lets you price properly.
- You capture the customer. An online booking is a name and an email. A walk-up is an anonymous card payment.
The case against, and it is real
- Some of your audience will not book. Passing trade, grandparents on a whim, tourists. If a meaningful share of your business is spontaneous, hard timed entry costs you customers.
- It adds friction. Every step between wanting to come and coming loses somebody.
- No-shows become your problem. An unbooked venue cannot have a no-show. A booked one can hold a slot for someone who never arrives.
- It can feel corporate. For a small, informal venue, a booking system can change the character of the place, and some regulars will say so.
How to tell which you are
| If this is true | Lean towards |
|---|---|
| You have a hard capacity for safety or comfort | Timed entry |
| Your peak is genuinely uncomfortable | Timed entry |
| Staffing is your biggest controllable cost | Timed entry |
| Much of your trade is passing or spontaneous | Open, with booking optional |
| You are rarely at capacity | Open |
| Visits vary wildly in length | Open, or a long slot |
The middle ground most venues land on
In practice the answer is rarely pure. The common settlement:
- Timed entry at peak, open the rest of the time. Weekends and holidays are booked; a wet Tuesday is walk-in. This is where most venues end up and it is usually right.
- Book ahead or pay more on the door. Keeps spontaneity possible while making booking the obvious choice.
- Timed entry, unlimited stay. You control arrivals, which is the bit that matters, without policing how long anyone stays.
- Hold back walk-up capacity. Sell most slots online, keep a share for the door, and you get the control without turning away the family who just drove past.
That last one is worth more attention than it usually gets. It is the cheapest way to get most of the benefit of timed entry without losing passing trade entirely.
If you switch, expect this
- Complaints in the first season, mostly from regulars who liked turning up. They mostly settle.
- An apparent dip, because pre-booking moves revenue earlier rather than adding to it. Judge it over a season, not a month.
- A capacity you can measure, which usually turns out to be different from what you assumed.
- Better staffing, which is where the money actually shows up.
Doing it without picking a side
Both models are just sessions with a time, a price and a cap. Timed entry uses short sessions with hard limits; open admission uses one long session with a generous limit; a hybrid runs whichever the day needs. A till on a tablet sells walk-ups into that same session, so the door and the website draw on one set of numbers rather than two, and the counts on your screen are the whole picture.
That is how Hatch works, and there is more on what Hatch does for your kind of venue. There are companion pieces on cutting no-shows and on planning a Christmas grotto, which is timed entry at its most extreme.
Common questions
Is timed entry better than open admission?
Neither is better in the abstract, because they solve different problems. Timed entry does not change how many people come, it changes when they arrive, so it is the right answer if your peak is uncomfortable or your capacity is genuinely limited. If your problem is that not enough people come at all, timed entry will not fix it and may cost you the passing trade you do have.
Will timed entry lose me walk-up customers?
Some, if you go all in. The usual settlement is to hold back a share of each slot for the door, so you get the control where it matters while the family who just drove past can still come in. Charging slightly more on the door than online keeps spontaneity possible while making booking ahead the obvious choice.
What happens to revenue when a venue switches to timed entry?
Expect an apparent dip at first, because pre-booking moves revenue earlier in the calendar rather than adding to it, and judge the change across a full season rather than a month. The saving usually shows up in staffing rather than in ticket income, because knowing how many people are booked into a slot is worth considerably more than hoping.
Written for UK leisure venues. The right answer depends on your capacity, your catchment and how much of your trade is spontaneous, and plenty of venues run both models on different days.