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Dorothy registers exhibition visitors speedily in 2009
Constant investment in innovation and a value-driven approach to pricing coupled with QRS’s 13 years’ experience as a visitor registration provider, promised that Dorothy was set to make event check-in even easier, quicker and more cost efficient. Dorothy was officially launched at this year’s Sign & Digital (28th-30th April, NEC) and has since been to 25 shows. The question is did Dorothy live up to expectations?
For those who may have missed it, Dorothy is the only self-service e-ticketing terminal in the industry that reads barcodes and prints in colour. Developed by QRS, the name Dorothy can conjure images of red shoes skipping down a yellow road with all the time in the world; but not this Dorothy. Standing 160cm tall with an air of confidence, this Dorothy is fast, efficient and environmentally superior to other exhibition registration systems. Dorothy can also print multiple badges, car-park tokens, seminar tickets, lunch vouchers and even lucky-winner tokens – all in full colour, as appropriate for each visitor.
David Harington, Managing Director at QRS says, “e-ticketing is definitely here to stay. Gone are the days when exhibition registration involved large quantities of paper and huge postage bills for pre and post show mailings with the inevitable impact on carbon footprint. Organisers can now reduce the show’s environmental impact by sending emails (‘e-tickets’) in place of physical badges.”
QRS were at DVD 2009, which used 10 Dorothies with no visitor badges mailed. Harington describes the visitors’ experience, “The registration process was quite spectacular. Visitors arrived in 56-seater busloads and were set down about 12 yards from the Dorothies – bunching like a registration company’s worst nightmare. The Dorothies performed flawlessly, and processed each busload in literally a couple of minutes. The visitors were mightily delighted, and said so.”
Carolyn Blakely, Marketing Manager for HEVAR, also sings Dorothy’s praises, “After seeing ‘Dorothies’ in action at another Faversham House Group exhibition, I decided to try the system at the HEVAR event. Having Dorothy in the registration area was invaluable; visitors found it easy to use and it sped up the registration process.”
Harington added, “On day 1 of HEVAR the organiser looked at the number of visitors waiting at registration and gloomily assumed that attendance was down. The facts were more cheerful: attendance was significantly up – the visitors were simply passing through faster.”
Dorothy exceeded expectation and performed flawlessly in its first year; proving that speed, efficiency and flexibility really can be combined for the benefit of organisers and visitors alike.
Dorothy is a Success at London HEVAR
At the recent London HEVAR event for the heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry, organisers Faversham House Group (FHG) utilised Dorothy, the personable QRS e-ticketing kiosk, to register visitors speedily.
Carolyn Blakely, Marketing Manager for HEVAR, said “After seeing ‘Dorothies’ in action at another Faversham House Group exhibition, I decided to try the system at the HEVAR event. Having a Dorothy in the registration area was invaluable; visitors found it easy to use and it sped up the registration process.”
Dorothy is the only badging kiosk that prints in colour, this not only means that it can colour code different visitor categories, but that it can also dispense more than just a badge.
Dorothy’s colour printing ability came into its own at the HEVAR show. FHG rewarded pre-registered visitors with a bacon roll and one exhibitor offered a bottle of wine to every tenth visitor.
David Harington, QRS Managing Director comments, “In previous years visitor entry was slowed down as visitors’ entitlements were checked, and the appropriate vouchers given. This time, Dorothy automatically dispensed the vouchers for bacon rolls and wine, at the same time as printing the visitor’s badge. Vouchers were printed in colour, on plain stationery, ensuring the design of each of the vouchers was not constrained.”
David added, “And it worked. I’m pleased to say that on day 1 of HEVAR the organiser looked at the number of visitors waiting at registration and assumed that attendance was down. In fact attendance was significantly up – the visitors were simply passing through faster.”
The Team Behind Dorothy
You’d expect the team that named its new self-service exhibition registration terminal ‘Dorothy’, to be slightly off the wall or mad about Oz. Neither is true. In fact, the QRS team behind Dorothy has been a fore-runner in the exhibition registration industry for 13 years and, having worked hard for many months to come up with a kiosk that fulfilled the need for a fast and efficient self-service terminal that reads barcodes, the team became quite attached to the kiosk and so gave it a personable name.
Managing Director, David Harington, said, “We have always prided ourselves on the inventive approach we take to shows that have special registration requirements and everything we do is focussed on what each individual organiser actually needs. We are a dedicated and friendly team and it only felt right that our new kiosk should have a personality too. Pilot shows have run with Dorothy over the last few months and the name is already becoming known in the industry.”
QRS was established by Harington in 1996 to provide visitor registration services at trade shows and since then the team has registered over 500 shows in Europe, the USA and the Far East. Harington’s background is mainly in computing, from software development to international sales to the advanced mathematics of bingo tickets. But in ‘96 he saw the need for reliable, cost-effective, computer-based visitor registration services at trade shows, and so set up QRS to fill the gap. This attitude of fulfilling needs within the industry has been sustained with continuous investment in new product development.
Harington continued, “The QRS team is made up of IT Manager Ben Wheal, Customer Support Programmer Marc Davies, On-Site Managers David Newman and Barbara Forrester, web-based registration support from Jonathan Baylis, Accounts Manager Fiona Jeffries, Project Controller Rachel Coker and Business Development Manager Colin Bruton. Together they ensure that QRS stays one step ahead of the competition while providing outstanding value for money.”
"Dorothy – It's Quick!"
 Long established visitor registration provider, QRS, will officially launch its personable e-ticketing kiosk, memorably named Dorothy, at Sign & Digital (28th-30th June, NEC). A name that usually conjures images of red shoes skipping down a yellow road with all the time in the world; but not this Dorothy. Standing 160cm tall with an air of confidence, this Dorothy is fast, efficient and impressively versatile.
Says David Harington, Managing Director at QRS, “Gone are the days when exhibition registration involved large quantities of stationery and expensive postage bills. e-ticketing is here to stay. Organisers can save cash and the planet by sending emails (‘e-tickets’) in place of physical badges.”
He continued, “But when visitors arrive at the event they need a quick way of getting their badge – and that’s when you need a kiosk. We found that no existing kiosks met the exhibition industry’s needs, so we set out to make one. We worked with Brunel University’s world-leading School of Engineering and Design to produce Dorothy.”
 What makes Dorothy stand out from the crowd? Dorothy is the only self-service terminal in the industry that reads barcodes.
“Check-in at a trade show is a bit like check-out at a supermarket,” says Harington, “and you wouldn’t operate a check-out without barcodes. That’s why with Dorothy you don’t have to key in any codes. You just present the barcode we’ve sent you by email, and your badge is printed.”
In pre-launch shows visitors remarked on Dorothy’s speed – not surprising considering it only takes a few seconds to read the barcode and print the badge.”
Dorothy can also print multiple badges, car-park tokens, seminar tickets, lunch vouchers and even lucky-winner tokens – all in full colour, as appropriate for each visitor. And unlike other kiosks, Dorothy is foldable for easy installation and transport helping the drive to reduce costs and cut carbon emissions.
Coupled with QRS’s 13 years’ experience, constant investment in innovation and value-driven approach to pricing; Dorothy is set to make event check-in even easier, quicker and more cost efficient.
Dorothy picks a winner!
Dorothy is versatile – she can do more than just print a badge for each person who brings an e-ticket. She can print other things too: multiple badges, badges valid only on particular days and so on. The response can be tailored to the individual.
The first application will come at Sign & Digital (28 – 30 April, NEC), where one lucky visitor each day will win a pair of Grand Prix tickets. When they present their e-ticket to Dorothy she will print first a lucky winner token, then the badge in the usual way.
Dorothy – to see her is to love her!
Dorothy was used very successfully at Bubble (children’s designer-wear, Olympia, 2 – 3 July 2008), where no physical badges at all were mailed. We received the usual very positive comments from the visitors and the show organiser. Not only that, another clothes show organiser, IDEX Media who organise Offprice (Olympia, 21 – 22 September 2008), came to the show and decided to use Dorothy for their Autumn shows on the strength of their experience of the e-ticketing system.
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