The busiest ten minutes of most conferences happen before anyone has said a word from the stage. The keynote is at nine, most delegates arrive between twenty past eight and ten to nine, and every one of them needs a badge.
A lot of those delegates were in the building the night before. They checked into the hotel, had dinner, and walked past the registration area on the way to the lift. If the desk had been open, they could have collected their badge then and walked straight in the next morning.
That is the whole idea of night-before badge collection. It is not new, but it is often run as an afterthought, with a spare member of staff and a printed list. Run properly, it takes a real share of the morning queue away before it forms.
When it is worth doing
An evening desk costs you a few hours of crew time and a second set-up. It pays off when:
- A good share of delegates are staying on site or nearby. A residential conference, a venue with its own hotel, or a block booking at the hotel next door.
- There is an evening event already. A welcome reception, an exhibitor drinks or a speakers' dinner brings people past the desk anyway.
- The first session starts early. The closer the first session is to the first arrivals, the less room the morning desk has to absorb a queue.
- Badges carry more than a name. If you hand out lanyards in different colours, a delegate pack or loaned kit such as translation receivers, every extra item adds seconds per person in the morning.
If most people are travelling in on the day, an evening desk will sit quiet. Look at the booking data first. If you asked about accommodation at registration, you already know roughly how many people will be in the building.
Tell people it exists
The evening desk only works if delegates know about it. Put it in the joining instructions email with the times and the exact location, not just "in the hotel". Mention it again in the reminder a day or two before.
Keep the times honest. Two to three hours in the early evening, lined up with when people actually check in and head to dinner, is usually enough. A desk open until eleven for four late arrivals is not a good use of anyone's evening.
Staff it like a real desk
The evening desk is often handed to whoever is free. Treat it as a proper shift instead.
- The same kit as the morning. The same scanners or tablet, the same badge stock, the same lanyards. If the evening desk prints badges on a different printer, test it before anyone arrives.
- The same guest list. Not a printout from last Tuesday. The evening desk should be working from the live list, so late name changes and substitutions are already there.
- Someone who can solve problems. The evening desk gets the awkward ones: the delegate whose colleague is coming instead, the booking under a maiden name, the speaker who never registered. Put someone on it who can make a decision.
- A clear close. When the desk shuts, the remaining badges go back into the morning run in order, and the lead writes down anything that needs following up.
Keep one count
The real risk of running two desks on two days is ending up with two versions of who has their badge. If the evening desk ticks names off paper and the morning desk scans passes, somebody will be printed a second badge, or a guest who collected the night before will show up as missing at lunch.
The fix is to check people in at the evening desk exactly as you would in the morning. Scan the pass, hand over the badge, and the guest is Checked in on the same list the morning desk opens. When the morning desk scans them again on the way into the hall, they come up as already checked in rather than as a problem, and the crew can wave them through. We covered what to do when a pass has been scanned before in handling a double scan at the door.
It also gives you a useful number overnight. If 140 of 400 delegates collected their badge in the evening, you know the morning desk is expecting 260, not 400, and you can move crew about accordingly.
Brief the morning desk on what happened
Five minutes at the start of the morning shift is enough. Cover how many collected the night before, any problems left open, and any changes to the list. If the evening desk found three badges with the wrong company name, the morning crew should know before the delegates in question walk up.
This is the same handover you would run between any two shifts, just with a night's sleep in the middle. There is more on that in the shift handover at the front door.
What you get back
A calmer first hour. Fewer people at the desk at twenty to nine, a morning crew who know their numbers, and delegates who walk straight into the hall with a coffee rather than queueing for a lanyard. The ones who collected early also tend to be the ones who stayed for the evening event, so the desk doubles as a proper welcome.
None of it needs special equipment. It needs the evening desk to be a real desk, working from the real list.
CheckInHub runs registration, QR check-in, kiosks and the live arrival count at checkinhub.co.uk, so an evening desk and a morning desk check guests in against the same list.
