Beyond Hygiene

Exploring how contactless technology can make facilities more effi cient and profi table, Gwen Luscombe caught up with Jonas Leisure Chief Executive Mike Henton, and Centaman Entrance Control’s General Manager, Michael Bystram.

While the global pandemic has supercharged the need for contactless technology, leisure facilities and attractions alike have adopted these measures and invested in additional ones, improve their overall efficiency and profitability.

Henton explains “like with any challenging time, we’ve innovated and found new ways of working. The learnings gained through the pandemic have allowed facilities to look at their processes and apply efficiencies.

“An example of this is the growing number of businesses introducing ‘self-service’ offerings for customers both to minimise physical contact during the pandemic, and also to give customers more control over their bookings. Going forward, the increased use of online and kiosk platforms will also reduce admin for customer service staff, freeing them up to focus on delivering exceptional service to those customers that require it.”

Venues utilising contactless technology for everything from ‘tap and go style’ payments to ticketless entry has surged.

Henton says these enhancements will improve the overall visitor experience and help facilities improve retention by building a loyal customer base.

Bystram agrees, noting “one of the changes we’ve seen throughout the pandemic is increased demand for automated entrance control technology that reduces common touchpoints. These modern access gates are taking workload off reception teams by automating the process of customers entering and exiting a leisure or fitness facility. They are also improving security by providing improved identification of visitors and making sure everyone who comes into a facility should be there.”

And it’s not just the hardware that’s improving the way facilities run day-today. Centaman Entrance Control’s new facial recognition add-on for the access gates are providing aquatic facilties and gyms across Australia and New Zealand with better security and ease of access.

The new EasyAccess facial recognition reader scans users’ faces to identify them before providing access through a gate or door. The read can also be set up to scan whether visitors are wearing masks and prevent entry to any who are not, if required.

Advising that facial recognition technology was already being used in corporate offices in Australasia, but the functionality and price point has, until now, largely ruled it out from use in aquatic facilities and gyms, Bystram adds “it is an ideal way for leisure centres and gyms to provide secure contactless entry during the global COVID-19 pandemic and adds convenience for members by removing the need for them to carry an access card with them at all times.

“It also provides increased security by preventing entry by unauthorised visitors who have stolen, found or illegally ‘borrowed’ an access card belonging to an existing paying member of your facility.”

One of the advantages of the new reader is that it works with almost any gate or door and could be retrofitted to many existing Centaman Entrance Control gates.

The reader can store up to 50,000 faces in its internal database and faces can be scanned from up to three metres away. It also includes anti-spoofing detection support that enables it to distinguish live faces from photos and videos.

Henton explains “the demand for upgraded entrance control solutions has meant some providers have struggled to keep up.

“We’ve been fortunate that our scale means we have been able to install new gates faster than most. However, there is some lead time when installing gates, as is the case for any physical infrastructure,

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Jonas Leisure's Visitance contact tracing App.

so it pays for people to make the decision to install them early rather than sitting on the fence for too long.

“Some of our biggest surprises came in the adoption of technology and the speed with which usage spread.

“For example, our Visitance contact tracing solution was picked up by a wide range of businesses in the UK, USA and other places around the world, in addition to Australia where we originally envisioned it being used.”

Visitance is a free contact tracing solution that also provides a population count displayed on a screen at the front entrance. It effectively displays the number of guests inside a facility at any one time. It simplified the check-in process of people moving in and out of a facility by using a QR code. Facility visitors scanned the code using the camera app on their phones and contact information was gathered and securely held at the Microsoft Azure data centre in Sydney, allowing managers to easily contact facility users if a case of COVID-19 was discovered at one of their sites.

Henton advises “the feedback we’ve received has been really positive.

“Of the platforms people have tried, Visitance seems to have been the most user friendly and many facilities are telling us it has helped them re-open safely.”

The City of Canning in Western Australia was one of the many organisations that used Visitance to support re-opening efforts at its leisure centres. The council used the system for three weeks in June just prior to the state entering Phase 4 of restrictions easing. These removed most restrictions on gyms and fitness centres.

The council lauded the system’s ease of use, professional look, and ability to record both entry and departure times for visitors. The latter had the added benefit of providing insights into overall average visit times for leisure centre users, in addition to enabling contact tracing and a real-time occupancy count to be displayed.

It’s the type of technology that until COVID-19, may not have been so readily considered, but one that’s quickly being

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adopted for its variety of benefits beyond hygiene.

Some facilities are also using Centaman Entrance Control solutions to control and monitor access to the different areas of their facility. This provides insight into who’s entered different areas, and when. It’s useful for security, as well as understanding where people have been within your facility and areas of popularity.

Beyond access control, technologies such as cashless payment systems for food and beverage purchases within venues and ticketless entry have all eased queues, wait times and even the need for additional staffing in venues.

As reported online by Australasian Leisure Management back in November 2020, cashless technology companies such as Intercard, have seen growing demand for its systems. This was in both operators upgrading by swapping out other vendors’ systems for Intercard as well as first-time buyers of cashless technology.

Customers and event attendees are increasingly arriving with e-tickets and staff are able to validate them on entry, at a distance, with a scan of the smartphone. Utilising a cashless system, venues are also able to ease the burden on merchandise and food and beverage outlets by moving to ‘tap and go’ only systems such as eftpos and Apple Pay.

It’s a similar experience for Embed, who provide cashless business management systems and solutions for the amusement and entertainment industries. They recently partnered with Ticket Time to open their new business and pop-up arcade located in the Australia Fair Shopping Centre on Queensland Gold Coast.

The arcade, which opened just prior to the Australian school holidays in June 2020, immediately encountered the challenge of Australia’s inter-state travel restrictions and border closures. This severely impacted tourism revenue and with limited staff, and the additional challenge of implementing additional COVIDSafe measures such as capacity caps, the owners needed to implement a system that acted as a ‘staff member’ without compromising guest’s experience.

They took advantage of Embed’s self-service kiosk, where customers could quickly reload their game cards and check balances without queueing. Additionally, owner Luke Phillips seized the opportunity to partner with a local shopping centre and set up an unmanned pop-up arcade.

Anyone with an existing Ticket Time game card could play at the pop-up. Within six weeks of opening, Ticket Time generated $17,000 in revenue while saving $7,000 in extra wages simply by using the kiosk and cashless system.

For facilities looking to setting up contactless solutions, the downtime to install it can be quite minimal.

Bystram goes on to say “when it comes to entrance control gates, installation is a reasonably rapid process.

“Our team is happy to provide advice on best practices for managing access for customers throughout any new gate installation process.”

Adding that it all depends on the agreed project plan and process for deploying the solution, Henton concludes “our team works with our clients to provide a plan that has minimal impact on business operations, aiming to eliminate downtime if possible, or at least ensure any downtime is short and occurs at a time that best suits the business.” Gwen Luscombe is Director of the Ideas Library and a regular contributor to Australasian Leisure Management.