Guest management at film festivals: avoid common pitfalls
Guest management varies significantly across film festivals. Maybe you keep it small and choose to offer only the basics, such as hotel stays and Q&As. Or maybe you have a grand plan that covers the guests’ every second from the flight until they’re in their cinema seats. Regardless of how much you do for your guests, you’re bound to run into some challenges. We’ve compiled the most common pitfalls in guest management at film festivals that we have heard, so that you can be prepared.
Communicating to avoid chaos
The number one challenge we hear from film festivals is planning communication. Even if you’ve sent all the information in advance, guests can still arrive without knowing where they need to be or how they’ll get there. Guests will usually attend multiple events and interact with different departments and, probably, some partners as well, so they’ll end up receiving a lot of emails. Throughout all that communication, chaos can ensue. At that point, it’s hard to determine the guest’s agenda or where they stand in the process: how much information do they already have, do they have a hotel yet, and can the meeting(s) be planned?
Although some chaos will always be part of this process, a clear communication plan and strong links between departments will help. So, make sure to think through who communicates what, when, and whether you can group important information together. There are a couple of ways to make it a little easier. Consider bulk or automated emails that are sent only when a guest clicks a specific option or when a payment is accepted. A clear software system that allows the team to check guest statuses and see what has already been sent will help keep a clear overview of all the communication.
Guest management & sustainability
Many film festivals now have a ‘green team’. They aim to make the festival’s operations more sustainable, for example, by using reusable or recyclable materials. However, they will also need to look at guest management. Given the flights, transportation, and hotel stays required for a film festival, this area offers opportunities for further improvement. While there’s no definitive solution yet for making guest management more sustainable, we can share ideas from other film festivals that are exploring ways to improve sustainable guest management.
Managing guest guides
A recent trend we’ve seen is film festivals employing dedicated hosts whose sole responsibility is to guide, host, and/or assist guests.
Managing these hosts’ schedules can be more challenging because they’re often influenced by various factors, making updates more complex when changes occur. Using film festival software, such as Fiona Festival, will provide you with an agenda module that links the host’s schedule to your other planning software. Fiona even offers automatic updates when a screening or event is postponed or rescheduled.
Planning the car service
One of the biggest logistical challenges is the car service. Based on the planned schedule for all screenings and events, guests must be transported between locations. Many film festivals do this by having cars, including chauffeurs, drive around. But how best to keep track of this? Spreadsheets, though still a favourite among many, are also prone to errors. Especially when things change, such as the time of a screening, you need to update them manually. And it often takes just one poorly communicated change to disrupt the entire planning process.
A recent addition to the Fiona Festival software is a car service tool, so you can become something of a taxi service. You can plan chauffeurs and add people to rides. It’s connected to the rest of your system, so any change to a guest’s schedule will automatically trigger an alert if an issue occurs.
Collaboration between guest management and other departments
One of those chicken-and-egg dilemmas is whether you should get your guests’ availability first or make your plans first. In practice, they tend to occur simultaneously. That’s why guest management and planning need to work closely together to avoid missing any confirmations or fixed screenings.
The easiest way to keep this collaboration running smoothly is to automate the key updates. Film festival software can be a huge help in this. It makes all the information visible and ensures your departments are connected. If the planning team schedules a screening, the guest management team will know, and vice versa. In Fiona, we also include notifications that deliver automatic recommendations. When the guest management team confirms a guest, a notification will pop up for the planning team, saying “This guest has just been confirmed. Do you want to plan a Q&A?”. Likewise, when a problem arises, the system will also notify the teams. For example, if you try to plan a meeting with a guest who hasn’t yet confirmed.
Fiona Festival will streamline your guest management
Guest management becomes much easier with customisable film festival software. This is how we can help you avoid the common pitfalls:
- Communication: Create an airtight communication plan with email automations, bulk emails and a system to manage the agendas of every department.
- Sustainability: Add an (optional) ‘green fee’ to your registration forms to offset your carbon footprint.
- Guest guiding: Create a schedule and a call sheet for guest guides that will automatically update when the plan changes. You can also export these as PDFs if your volunteers don’t have access to the system.
- Car service: Plan chauffeurs, cars and guests with automatic ties to guests’ schedules so updates can’t be overlooked.
- Collaboration between departments: Keep an eye on guest availability and film planning, with automatic alerts or suggestions when things change. The guest status system will allow everyone to see whether a guest is pending, confirmed or cancelled.
Want to see how Fiona Festival makes guest management a lot easier? Request a demo!
Share this post on your social media
Who is Fiona?
At Fiona, we love tech and film festivals. That is why our film festival clients love Fiona’s film festival management software: designed to be effective, user-friendly, and easy to use. We are constantly adding new features and learning from our trusted film festival partners. Meanwhile, we stay updated on new technologies to keep Fiona the best film festival management software.
