Vaccine Passport: The first positive rating at festivals and cinemas

There was no traffic jam at the entrance, the concert started late or aggressively … Many festivals generate a positive rating from the first days of using the vaccine passport.

A little slower

It definitely slows down the entry process a bit, but it went well and it wasn’t a big load, Close El-Sayek, Contra-Correspondent Observer. The event features water concerts at the Park Jean-Tropue in Montreal from Wednesday to Saturday evening.

It went so well that people were comfortable showing their vaccine passports, explains Mary-Pierre Letornio, the festival’s communications manager de la Poutine, who opened the door in Drummondville on Thursday. Thursday evening was festive, with a sense of nature.

The same goes for the Emerging Music Festival (FME) at Abbott-Demis Gaming, which runs from Thursday to Sunday. We are pleasantly surprised, Says Maggie Monteri-Laruch, general manager of FME.

I have to say that FME, like other festivals, has revised its logistics to suit this new move. A central kiosk is set up to streamline the process to verify vaccine evidence and the identity of the public. Once their QR code has been verified to access the festival’s 15 sites, about twenty people alternately inform people and put bracelets on their wrists.

As for the VaxiCode mobile app, it satisfies the festivals. It’s not perfect, but it’s not so bad, says Magali Monteri-Loroch. This processor works better on iPhone than on Android.

Cinema fans are getting ready and ready

As for theaters, most people have their QR code. The mobile app works well, Mentions Mario Ford, president and CEO of the Museum of Fubian Cinemas, Park and Montreal.

Many show up with paper sources, not electronics, he adds. This requires a short adjustment period because the paper has an annoying tendency to wrinkle or is printed with more or less equal quality, making it difficult to read the QR code.

However, according to Eric Bouchard, president of the Quebec Cinemas Owners Association (APCQ) and owner of Cinema Saint-Eustace, the big test has not yet taken place.

Wednesday is a good time to get used to this new activity because the weather was nice and it came back to school so there weren’t too many people, He said before noting that rain is expected Monday in the Montreal area.

The consequences of the visit?

For now, it is too soon to assess the consequences of implementing a vaccine passport for cinema visits. We expect a 20 to 30% drop, Explains Mario Ford.

He decided to abolish one session per day and facilitate access to the rooms even though he restricted the sources of the vaccine to one room to accommodate the sessions. If things change, we will add a session.

In addition to the financial losses caused by this 20% reduction in supply, there are costs incurred by the hundred or more extra hours created by verifying the vaccine passport.

If they had received requests for a refund of festival tickets following the announcement that the vaccine passport had been created, they would have been able to resell some of them. This was the case with FME, which returned 300 tickets out of the 20,000 who passed. Half of these have found pickers, Magali refers to Monteri-Loroch.

On Friday evening, the Putin Festival sold out, with maximum capacity almost reached after the first evening.

We received 10% to 15% refund requests, but we reached our targets for the first year of Contre-Currant., Underlines, for its part, Chloé El-Sayegh.