Fandango Launching Guides to Help Viewers Navigate Theaters
By George Robbins
With theaters the way they are right now, it is no surprise that people might feel a bit out of place if they were in the mood to go out to a theater. Most theaters aren’t even opened up right now because they are one of the last types of businesses that states are allowing to open up. This is for good reason as they get a large amount of foot traffic and often times aren’t cleaned properly to stop the spread of infection. There are still theaters that have opened their doors and they did manage to see some form of consumer base during this past Father’s Day weekend. Though they don’t have any new content to show anybody, this hasn’t stopped them from opening their doors to the public and bringing in some kind of money.
The problem that we see going forward is the fact that no one knows how they should be behaving in public and it’s only creating more of a health risk. Theaters have apparently got their guidelines set up for when they reopen their doors for the general public to return to them. Many chain theaters, including those owned by AMC, will be reopening their doors wherever possible by the middle of July. This has a lot of people concerned as to whether they truly have any idea as to what it is they are doing or must do in order to allow people in their doors. On top of the theater following restrictions, viewers must also know what they are doing in order to follow through on the social distancing order.
Theaters are aware that they must strongly enforce the limited capacity rule if they wish to stay open due to the new health guidelines. The new limited capacity rules require that no more than 25% or 100 people, whichever is lower, are allowed in the theaters at once. All of this is to enforce the social distancing rule which is still the biggest way of preventing the spread of the virus. The question for many people who decide to go to the theater is how exactly they are supposed to follow the new rules. Also, what is the best possible way to orient yourself in order to follow the rules and watch the movie like you wanted to watch it. Fandango is doing their best to help with that now.
In order to help get people back into theaters to watch movies, Fandango has launched new features and services to help people out and to keep them safe and informed. Among the new features are options to find nearby theaters that are opened, a way to check new theater policies, a contactless way to purchase tickets, contactless ticket entry for theaters, and, in their words, a worry free refund and exchange policy. With all of this in place, it makes it much easier for the general public to find what it is they are looking for. This also makes it easier for theaters by giving people the opportunity to do everything online and get people through the doors quicker, preventing lines and hopefully drawing more people to theaters. We will know within the next month whether it was worth them doing this or not when the remainder of theaters hopefully open without issue.