A guide to venue resource management

How to stop managing inventory in your head: A guide to venue resource management

Most leisure venues don't have a framework for managing their physical resources. They manage staff scheduling, room rentals, and equipment with different spreadsheets or on physical paper. Some venue managers might simply keep track of resources in their heads.

If you are an experienced venue manager, this approach might seem effective—until it isn’t. Issues like overbooking activity spaces, double-booking rooms and tour guides, or underselling tickets or event spaces are more than occasional inconveniences. They can hurt your bottom line and frustrate customers to the point that they won’t return or decide to try booking with one of your competitors.

Venue resource management is an important aspect of your business, and it’s not something you want to relegate to notepads or spreadsheets.

Let’s take a closer look at why resource management matters for leisure venues and family entertainment centers (FECs) and how you can use tools like capacity management software to ensure you aren’t under- or over-booking and getting the full value out of your space, equipment, and staff.

What counts as a resource in leisure venue and FEC operations?

In the context of leisure venues, resource does not mean commodity or inventory. It’s much more than that. You can think of resources as everything that needs to be in the right place, at the right time, for a booking to actually work.

Resources fall into four categories:

• Zones are the physical spaces that host activities or events. Think of a laser tag arena, a birthday party room, a children’s play area, and a food court. Each zone has unique capacity rules, turnaround time, and scheduling limitations. Some, like a birthday party room, can only be used by one group at a time.
• Equipment describes the physical items that make an activity possible or enhance the guest experience. It might mean grip socks at a trampoline park, props in an escape room, audio guide headsets at a museum, or safety helmets at an adventure park. Without enough equipment, visitors won’t get the full experience. In some instances, they won’t be able to participate at all.
• Staff are the people needed to host an event or offer an activity legally and safely. A climbing wall needs a certified instructor, for example. A children's birthday party might need a character host, while a museum has to keep tour guides on staff. Staffing and staff scheduling are important because their availability directly determines how many activities and sessions a venue can run.
• Vehicles are important for venues that have to offer transport to guests. This might include a road train that shuttles guests around a theme park or zoo, go-karts at a karting facility, or a boat used for guided river tours. If a vehicle is booked, broken, or being cleaned, it's unavailable.

*Capacity and the ability to offer guest services depend on having these resources available.

How managers get venue resource management wrong

For many leisure venues, resource management is an afterthought that includes a spreadsheet for room bookings, a whiteboard for staff scheduling, or a text message from an activity zone manager about equipment that’s out for repair.

As a venue grows and gets more bookings, cracks begin to develop. Double-bookings become more common, or there isn’t enough equipment for every guest. Getting more resources isn’t a viable solution. All those extra laser tag guns may sit unused most of the time, and those new guides you hired might spend hours getting paid to wait in between tours.

The solution: Smeetz resources

Smeetz Resources works by creating a direct connection between your bookings and the resources that make each activity possible. How does it work? You create a resource (a room, a piece of equipment, a staff member) and link it to the relevant ticket type.

The system automatically counts every booking for that ticket type against your available resources.

For instance, if you have 50 laser tag vests and guns, the system will automatically cap capacity in the laser tag zone at 50 for each laser tag session. The count will automatically reset for each subsequent session so that you never run out of equipment.

The system works for other types of resources, as well. If a guide can handle 30 guests per tour, Smeetz will limit bookings for a specific tour time slot to 30.

With leisure venue automation, you and your staff can focus on providing guests with great experiences rather than constantly solving resource issues. And, you will always get the most out of the resources you have.

Advanced resource management

Of course, leisure venue operations are complex. Booking capacity control is about more than avoiding double bookings or running out of equipment. For most venues and activities, there are multiple variables at play for each visit, and it's necessary to have capacity management software that can go beyond the basics.

Smeetz Resources has advanced functions that make more complicated resource management possible.

• Sequential allocation: You can set the priority in which certain rooms or zones are filled. For instance, set the system to fill Zone A before opening Zone B. This can help consolidate operations. If you are only operating one full zone, you don't need to schedule staff for two half-full zones.
• Time offsets: Smeetz also lets you add time offsets to account for prep and cleanup or to offer a buffer between events. For example, you can set time offsets for a birthday room to allow for 30 minutes of setup and 30 minutes of cleanup around the actual booked time. In other words, you automatically have the required time between bookings, with the customer seeing the actual booking time (without the buffers).
• Multiple resources per ticket: Many activities require both capacity and equipment. For instance, a trampoline park has a maximum capacity, and you also need to account for grip socks. Smeetz depletes all the necessary resources simultaneously, so you always have enough space, equipment, and staff.

You are getting comprehensive resource management so that you can permanently delete your spreadsheets and take your whiteboards off the wall for good.

It's time to automate venue resource management

Ready to stop tracking resources manually? Set up your first resource in Smeetz — or book a demo and we'll walk you through it.