Short Case

Managing queues at Madame Tussauds, Amsterdam

A short holiday in Amsterdam would not be complete without a visit to Madame Tussauds located on four upper floors of the citys most prominent department store in dam square. With 600,000n visitors each year, this is the third most popular tourist attraction in Amsterdam, after the flower market and canal trips. On busy days in the summer, the center can just manage to handle 5,000 visitors. On a wet day in January, however, there may be only 300 visitors throughout the whole day.

The center is open for admission, seven days a week, from 10.00 am to 5.30 pm. In the streets outside, orderly queues of expectant tourists snake along the pavement, looking in at the display in the store windows. In this public open space, Tussauds can do little to entertain the visitors, but entrepreneurial buskers and street artists are quick to capitalize on a captive market.

On reaching the entrance lobby, individuals, families and groups purchase their admissions tickets. The lobby is in the shape of large horseshoe, with the ticket sales booth in the centre. On winter days or at quiet spells, there will be only one sales assistant, but on busier days, visitors can pay at either side of the ticket booth, to speed up the process. Having paid, the visitors assemble in the lobby outside the to lifts. While waiting in this area, a photographer wanders around offering to take photos of the visitors standing next to life-sized wax figures of famous people. They may also be entertained by living look-alike of famous personalities who act as guides to group of visitors in batches of around 25 customers (the capacity of each of the two lifts which takes visitors up to the facility). The lifts arrive every four minutes and customers disembark simultaneously, forming one group of about 50 customers, who stay together throughout the section.

REQUIRED

1. Summarize the above short Case study in fifty words.
2. Generally, what could Madame Tussauds do to cope with the demand fluctuation?
3. What does the operation do to make queuing relatively painless? What else could it do?