Waitwhile improves the wait experience for guests at Tribeca Film Festival

The Challenge

With hundreds of thousands of attendees annually, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) in NYC is a world-renowned destination for entertainment lovers.

One of the most exciting parts of the festival is the Tribeca Virtual Arcade that showcases the latest in immersive entertainment and virtual reality. Every year, over 20 world premiere virtual and augmented exhibits are showcased along with five Storyscapes, Tribecas in-competition Immersive section.

Each exhibit can be experienced by only a handful of guests at a time. Before the festival used Waitwhile, the lines would snake around the venue and wait times could exceed several hours for the most popular exhibits.

With the dizzying amount of things to see and do at Tribeca Film Festival, the last thing you want to do as a guest is to stand in line. Thankfully, Waitwhile not only cuts the wait time in half, it also lets the guests enjoy and explore the event venue while waiting for their turn!

The Solution

Tribeca Film Festival started using Waitwhile in 2015 as a way to streamline the waiting experience and have used it every festival since, hitting their 5th milestone in 2019.

With Waitwhile, every exhibit is set up as a separate queue/waitlist and the event host can easily track progress and wait times across all at one glance.

Guests join an exhibit line on Waitwhile by either signing up via a iPad-powered kiosk or via a website link on their phones. Once they’ve joined, they receive a confirmation SMS text with their place in line and estimated wait. It also includes a web link that they can open to view their wait status in realtime.

While they wait, they can enjoy the event space and check out other experiences. When it’s time to head back, Waitwhile automatically sends them another SMS text to start heading back.

At the exhibit, the host simply checks them in when the guests start their experience. They can use any device like a smartphone or tablet for this.

After the visit, the guests receive a “Thank you” text where they can rate the experience.

During and after the event, the Tribeca crew can see trends and metrics of how the exhibitions are doing in terms of attendees, wait times, satisfaction and more. This helps them learn and improve in realtime.

The Result

Overall, Waitwhile has dramatically improved the guest experience at Tribeca Film Festival and Virtual Arcade.

Wait times have been reduced with up to 50%
Customer satisfaction grew with 50%