The festival industry is rapidly changing to meet the needs of today’s festival-goers. As our recent survey revealed, attendees expect a tech-savvy and personalized festival experience — and organizers are delivering.
One way organizers are pulling this off? Location-awareness technology. Location-awareness technology, or “proximity technology,” has just started to rock the festival industry. But it’s already made its presence felt in retail, where it is expected to drive close to $44 billion in sales this year.
Read on to learn more about the tech behind some of today’s biggest festival trends.
How Location-Awareness Tech Works
Small wireless beacons shoot notifications to attendees’ phones if they’re within a prescribed radius, or “geofence.” Festival-goers opt in to receive these notifications when downloading your event’s app. When they pass within range of a beacon, a tailored message is sent to the phone via the app.
Users can also turn off the notifications, allowing them to customize their festival experience. But they’re far more likely to keep them on. In 2015, opt-in rates reached as high as 80%, according to Drew Burchfield of Aloompa, the leading provider of mobile event technology.
So pairing location-awareness technology with festivals — where hundreds or thousands of people are roaming around hoping for something to grab their attention — seems like a natural fit. But how is it actually used in practice?
Here are some examples of how big-name brands are using the trending tech and how you might steal their strategies right now.
What they’re doing: Retail stores like Macy’s and American Eagle send out discounts based on which section of the store shoppers are in via a third-party app.
- How to apply it at your next festival: Send out discounts to people walking by a food stand, even timing them to hit before the usual rush.
What they’re doing: Several museums send information about nearby artworks via their own apps.
- How to apply it at your next festival: Tell guests at one booth about a similar booth they might like.
- Notify passersby of a workshop or live exhibition that’s about to start nearby.
What they’re doing: Several airlines have experimented with sending flight updates and loading boarding passes onto passengers’ phone screens as they approach the gate.
- How to apply it at your next festival: Automatically load attendees’ tickets or alert them when they’re passing booths they have indicated they were interested in using your app.
What they’re doing: Beacons have been installed at several sports stadiums to alert fans to nearby points of interest, offer discounts or seat upgrades, or even help them find the shortest lines
- How to apply it at your next festival: Track which lines are the shortest, so you can better manage wait times.
- Show attendees where they are on an interactive map of the festival and the best routes to get around.
What they’re doing: The technology has also been used at music festivals, helping organizers track which artists were the most popular.
- How to apply it at your next festival: Learn which booths or stages attendees are going to the most and where they’re lingering the longest. You can also learn when they’re likely to go certain places.
What they’re doing: Los Angeles is experimenting with using the tech to notify drivers whether or not they can park in a certain space.
- How to apply it at your next festival: Advances like this might be applied to helping festival-goers find their cars in a crowded lot.
The future of technology is where things could really get interesting for festival organizers. The technology has been rapidly gaining popularity since 2013, when Apple introduced iBeacon, which enables iPhone apps to send the location-dependent alerts. In just that short time, we’ve seen all these applications and advances. Who knows what’s next?
But no matter what new innovations are still to come, the current applications of this tech are already transforming festivals. Make sure you jump on this trend before you’re left behind.
To discover which other trends are driving the festival industry, download our free report The Future of Festivals: 8 Trends You Need to Know.
