October and November are open day season. Colleges, universities and sixth forms run their autumn events while prospective students are still deciding where to apply, and the timing is not loose. UCAS's equal consideration deadline for most undergraduate courses starting in 2027 is 18:00 on 13 January 2027, with Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses closing on 15 October 2026 (UCAS, 2026). Every open day between now and then is part of somebody's decision.
An open day front door is not like a conference door. The guest list is a guide, not a contract. People arrive as families. Half the room wants the same talk at the same time. And the organiser needs the data afterwards far more than most events do, because the whole point is the follow-up.
Expect the household, not the individual
A conference registers one person per pass. An open day registers a student and then sees them arrive with a parent, a grandparent and a younger brother.
Decide before the day how you count them. The simplest approach is one registration per household, with the student as the named guest and a party size recorded at the door. That keeps the follow-up pointed at the person who is actually applying, while still giving you an honest headcount for fire safety and catering. Our guide to group and household check-in goes into the detail.
What you do not want is a desk that turns families away because only one of them is on the list. Brief the crew that a household with one registered name is a fully valid arrival.
Plan for the walk-ups
Open days attract more walk-ups than almost any other event. A family is visiting the town, sees the banners, and comes in. A student registered for the morning and turns up in the afternoon. Someone heard about it from a friend on the day.
These are exactly the people you want, so make it fast for them to join the list. A short walk-up form on a tablet, or a QR code on a sign that opens the registration page on their own phone, keeps them out of the main queue. Ask for the minimum at the door, name, email, course of interest and consent to be contacted, and nothing more. Walk-up registration without the chaos covers how to set the lane up.
Check people into talks, not just the building
The main front door tells you who came. The talks tell you what they came for. A student who sat in on computer science and engineering is a different follow-up from one who only went to the accommodation tour.
Scanning passes at the door of each session gives you that picture without asking anyone to fill in a form. It also tells you, live, when a room is full, so crew can steer the next wave to the repeat session rather than letting a queue build in a corridor. We wrote about this in checking people into sessions, not just the building.
Put the desk where the arrivals actually come from
Campuses have more than one way in. The car park, the station path and the main gate can each deliver a stream of visitors, and the desk tends to end up by whichever entrance the events team uses.
Walk the routes before the day and watch where people come from on a normal visit day. If two entrances are busy, run two check-in points on the same live list rather than one desk and a sign. Running two entrances without losing the count explains how to keep the numbers straight.
Staff the door with people who can answer questions
At a conference, the door crew scan and move people on. At an open day, every family has a question within ten seconds of arriving. Where is the engineering talk. Is there parking. Can we see a room.
Put at least one person near the desk whose only job is to answer questions, ideally a current student. It keeps the scanning lane moving and gives families a much better first impression than a busy desk pointing at a map. A short door brief at the start of the day makes sure everyone knows the timings and the common answers.
Get consent right at the door
The follow-up is why the open day exists, so it has to be lawful. Under UK GDPR you need a clear basis for contacting people afterwards, and for marketing emails that usually means consent the visitor actively gave. Ask once, in plain words, on the registration form and the walk-up form, and keep the answer against their record.
Be careful with under-18s. Many open day visitors are 16 or 17, and the parent standing next to them may not want their own email on your list. Keep the questions minimal, and record who agreed to what. Consent and the post-event email has more on this.
Use the numbers the same week
The day after an open day, the useful questions are simple. How many registered households came. How many walk-ups joined. Which talks were full and which were half empty. Who came but never went into a single session.
If check-in was live all day, those answers are already there. Send the follow-up while the visit is fresh, tailored to the talks each student actually attended, and use the session numbers to plan the spring open day. The numbers worth pulling after the event lists what to look at.
A short list for your next open day
- Register households, with the student as the named guest and a party size.
- Brief crew that one registered name covers the whole family.
- Run a separate walk-up lane with a short form or a QR code on a sign.
- Scan passes into each talk, not just the main door.
- Put a check-in point at every busy entrance, all on one live list.
- Station someone near the desk just to answer questions.
- Ask for consent once, plainly, and record it, with care for under-18s.
- Pull the numbers and send tailored follow-ups the same week.
CheckInHub runs the whole door on one live list, with walk-up registration, session scanning and every guest shown as Registered, Checked in, Departed or Absent, at checkinhub.co.uk.
