Why should visitor communication begin before an emergency?

A public address system can be fully operational without visitors knowing that they will receive important information through it. At temporary events in public spaces in particular, this information channel only comes into being for the event. Preparation therefore also includes making it recognisable to the audience.

Making information channels visible during everyday event operations

Welcome messages and helpful notices about orientation, help points or programme changes provide opportunities for this. Visitors experience who is addressing them and through which channel information from event management arrives.

The BaSiGo module on safety communication recommends building safety notices into welcome messages, presentations and the course of the event. Audience changeovers are also named as a suitable occasion. At open events, guests who arrive later must therefore be taken into account as well [1].

Such hospitality announcements can help to prepare safety communication. That a familiar information channel can make later warnings easier to place is a professional inference. It does not imply an automatic learning effect or a guaranteed response in an emergency.

Addressing attention deliberately

Visitors are busy with music, conversations and the event experience. Organisers should therefore not assume that a message that has been sent out has already been noticed and understood.

Helpful everyday information should be short, relevant and measured. In an incident, the safety announcement must be able to stand out clearly. This requires planning suitable moments, understandable content and, where necessary, interrupting competing sound. An alert tone can draw attention; the message that follows must explain what action is required.

Read more: Emergency PA at events: intelligible, multilingual and resilient.

Preparing the transition to an incident

The communication concept should define who addresses visitors in normal operations and in an incident, which channels are used and how audibility and understanding are checked. BaSiGo also describes this link [2].

Read more: How can public address infrastructure support both service and safety?

This results in a concrete planning task: making the information channel recognisable during everyday event operations while ensuring that urgent safety information clearly takes priority. An existing loudspeaker system alone does not yet fulfil this task.

The archived BaSiGo wiki reflects the project status of June 2015. It is used here as a professional planning basis; it is not an experimental study of the effects of hospitality announcements. Recommendations on measured use and on clearly distinguishing urgent information are editorial planning recommendations.