10.

1177/0010880404271560
Managing Real
and Virtual Waits
in Hospitality and
Service Organizations
by DUNCAN DICKSON, ROBERT C. FORD, and BRUCE LAVAL
Nearly all service and hospitality experiences require
customers to wait at some point in the service pro-
cess. Unless the provider of the service has unlimited
capacity or can precisely match customer demand to
available capacity, customers will be forced to wait for
the experience they seek. Although waiting is an ex-
pected part of many services (say, gracious dining), for
most customers waiting is an annoyance to be mini-
mized or avoided. Waiting can also cause customer
dissatisfaction that can greatly influence the intent to
return whenever that service experience is sought
again. To minimize the negative aspects of waiting,
managers have available the following three strate-
gies. The first is to manage the reality of the actual
wait through the use of techniques that can help better
match capacity with customer demand. The second is
to manage the perception of the wait by responding to
howcustomers perceive the wait. The third, and most
innovative, is to make the wait invisible through devel-
oping virtual queues, which allow customers to
participate in other activities while they wait for an
appointed time at their desired activity.
Keywords: customer satisfaction; queue manage-
ment; Walt Disney World; virtual queues
B
alancing customer demand with an organiza-
tions ability to serve those customers has long
been a challenge in the hospitality industry, as it
is with all services. In that regard, there are few cus-
tomer service operations that do not ask guests to wait
during peak times. Regardless of how hard the plan-
ners plan, how many early bird specials the marketers
offer, or the technological solutions offered by tech-
52 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
2005 CORNELL UNIVERSITY
DOI: 10.1177/0010880404271560
Volume 46, Issue 1 52-68
nology wizards to spread out the pattern of
customer arrivals, it seems inevitable that
at lunch a restaurant will be crowded, at
check-in time the hotel lobby will be full,
or the best amusement park rides will have
the longest lines. If demand is so great or
so concentrated in a short period of time
that it creates long waits, customers will
become dissatisfied, leave, or even pass by
the company to go somewhere else. If
there is too much capacity, on the other
hand, the company saddles itself with an
uncompetitive cost structure in the formof
idle capacity. In addition, the firm risks
sending a negative message to its custom-
ers that this cannot be a good business
because it is so underutilized. The chal-
lenge for organizations, then, is to find the
optimal point where the costs of service
and the costs of waiting are minimized.
Many writers have spent much time trying
to help managers meet that challenge.
1
Waits are an important topic, as customer
wait time is a frequently monitored indica-
tor of service performance and has been
identified as a key predictor of customer
satisfaction.
2
Managing customer waits is the focus
of this article. Our purpose is to identify
three approaches that hospitality and ser-
vice organizations can use singly or in
combination to manage the inevitable
waits. To begin, we give a brief overview
of some of the traditional quantitative
strategies for managing a wait. We then
shift attention to the strategies and tech-
niques for managing customers percep-
tions of wait times. Finally, we discuss a
relatively new concept for managing wait
times, called a virtual wait or virtual
queue, and offer some practical applica-
tions of this concept. The virtual-queue
waiting strategy recognizes that guests
can be freed from physically standing in
line by being placed in a virtual queue,
which eliminates both the actuality and
perception of waiting by allowing guests
to engage in other productive and en-
joyable activities until their time to be
served has arrived.
Why Are Waits Necessary?
In an ideal world, hospitality and ser-
vice organizations would find that point
where they minimize both their costs of
providing a service and the costs incurred
by having people wait. One would hope
that this point would also be where the
operation has the exact capacity available
to serve each customer at the moment that
the customer wanted the service. If this
ideal were reached, no customer would
ever have to wait for service, no capacity
would ever sit idle, and the company
would minimize its costs. The ideal world
is seldom seen, though, as service provid-
ers are hard-pressed to cost-effectively
match their capacity to customer-arrival
patterns. Because service providers do not
typically possess peak demand levels of
capacity, and because customers rarely
arrive at service operations in perfectly
predictable patterns, queues are inevitable
in service operations.
3
Types of queues. While we often think
of the typical queue as a physical line of
people standing in front of a server, there
are other types of queues. For example,
a queue might be a collection of people
sitting at computer terminals scattered
around the country waiting for dial-up
access to their Internet provider or people
listening to fill music while waiting their
turn to talk to a live customer service rep-
resentative on the phone. While the math-
ematical principles that apply to manag-
ing these types of waits are the same as
those governing a physical queue, we
focus here on the typical service queues,
where customers arrive at a service facility
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 53
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
and wait in line for the service to be de-
livered. Familiar examples include cus-
tomers waiting for tables at a restaurant,
guests waiting for front-desk agents to
check them into a hotel, or guests waiting
in line to be thrilled on Disney Worlds
Space Mountain.
Waits involve managing two major
customer issues, namely, howlong people
actually wait and howlong they think they
are waiting. Managing the actual wait time
focuses on minimizing the sum of the
costs of waiting and the cost of serving the
customers by providing capacity. Among
the costs of waiting are those that result
from customer frustration with the wait,
such as abandoning the wait and going
somewhere else for service, diminished
customer satisfaction and intent to return,
and reduction in revenues. In most cases,
this means that it is important to keep the
wait as short as possible by (1) ensuring
that the appropriate capacity has been pro-
vided to yield a wait time that the antici-
pated number of customers will find rea-
sonable and (2) ensuring that the queue is
designed in a way that allows customers to
flow through the system in the most expe-
ditious manner possible.
The second customer issue is managing
the perception of howlong the wait feels
or how enjoyable the wait feels. This
focuses on ensuring that queues are de-
signed to provide ways for customers to
have their psychological needs and expec-
tations met while they wait. Organizations
should manage both the actual wait and
the perceived wait. As a consequence, we
discuss these two topics separately.
Strategies for Managing
Actual Customer Waits
There are several major strategies for
managing actual wait times. There are
quantitative models for determining the
optimal balance between the costs of wait-
ing and the costs of capacity to provide
service.
4
There are also waiting line design
strategies that can improve the flow of
people in waiting situations. Both
approaches offer means to manage the
actual wait for customers.
5
Finally, there
are incentive strategies that can create
demand shifting so that the arrivals are
matched with the capacity in a managed
way.
6
Agood illustration of this strategy is
a reservations system.
Quantitative Models
Anumber of quantitative and statistical
models have been developed that deal
with a variety of queuing configurations.
Quantitative models can determine the
optimal balance between the costs of wait-
ing and the costs of capacity to provide
service.
7
Not only do these models allow
one to describe the operating characteris-
tics of a particular queue, but they also
allowthe examination of howany changes
in the physical configuration of the wait-
ing line can change the length of the wait.
How much capacity to build, hire, or have
available is a decision that results from
careful study of the expected demand pat-
tern and the costs of serving that demand.
Whether one is trying to determine how
many servers to schedule for a shift in a
restaurant, how many check-in lines to in-
stall in a hotel lobby, or how many black-
jack tables to open in a casino, the ap-
proach is essentially the same. Managers
start by gathering data that allow them to
accurately predict the following three fac-
tors: (1) how many people will arrive in a
given time period for the service, (2) what
will be their pattern of arrivals, and (3)
what will be the rate at which those cus-
tomers can be served by the available ca-
pacity. These three factors determine the
capacity decision.
54 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
Queues can be described in terms of
their physical structure: that is, how many
may seem high, this standard reflects a
conscious decision to not disappoint its
guests even on busy days. That policy also
creates a challenge for Disneys marketing
department to find creative ways to
increase attendance during the nonpeak
periods of the year so that the available
capacity is used as efficiently as possible.
The need to smooth out the peaks and val-
leys of demand is the reason that down-
town convention hotels offer special
weekend rates, restaurants offer early bird
specials, and airlines offer off-peak
discount fares.
While the design-day concept is useful
for determining the best facilities-versus-
waiting trade-off for both the customer
and hospitality organization, it may not be
possible for all organizations to set this
service level on their own. In some in-
stances organizations must be able to pro-
vide service to all customers on a capacity
day (the day on which maximum demand
might be imposed on the system). For ex-
ample, government regulations can re-
quire power generation companies or
other public utilities to build what is re-
ferred to as peak-load capacity, so that
they never run out of electricity or water
on even the peak-demand days.
Queuing Models
and Queue Configurations
When the complexity of a queuing con-
figuration is such that standard statistical
models cannot describe it, simulations can
be used to replicate the delivery systems
operation and characteristics.
10
Quantita-
tive approaches based on simulations can
be useful in designing the optimal waiting-
line-design pattern. A simple illustration
is the common serpentine or snake
lines frequently seen in banks, airports, or
hotel lobbies. Simulations and actual
observations have demonstrated that this
configuration results in much shorter cus-
tomer wait times and less congestion than
the traditional arrangement of parallel
lines in front of each server.
11
Interrelatedness of Multiple Queues
When there are many waits in an inter-
twined system, they must be managed
together as a system.
12
If staff is shifted to
manage the queue for a hotels valet park-
ing, for example, then the front-desk wait
may become intolerable and cause dissat-
isfaction. Shifting resources or people to
reduce the wait at one point in the service
system may make another part under-
staffed or underserved. In other words, all
the parts of most hospitality experiences
are hooked together in ways that require
careful consideration of how the solution
to one wait may affect another.
Unexpected results. An example of the
other interrelated nature of waits and how
shifting capacity to relieve one wait can
adversely affect another occurred at Dis-
neyland in the 1960s. Long one of the
most popular attractions at Disneyland,
Pirates of the Caribbean had one of the
longest lines. As part of an ongoing
expansion program (and in hopes of re-
ducing the long lines at Pirates of the
Caribbean), Disneylands management
decided to build a new Haunted Mansion
attraction. This, they felt, would create
added value and shorten the lines at
Pirates. They were surprised when the
lines at Pirates got even longer after the
Haunted Mansion openedand those
lines were equaled by the lines at Haunted
Mansion.
What the planners did not realize was
that simultaneous changes to Disney-
lands attraction ticketing system would
distort demand for the Pirates of the Carib-
56 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
bean ride (not to mention the Haunted
House). In an effort to better distribute
attraction demand, Disneyland sold ticket
books that included a predetermined dis-
tribution of attraction tickets that catego-
rized rides as A, B, C, D, or E. The E-rated
rides were the most popular and the A
rides were the least popular. The rationale
for the ticket books was that by limiting
the number of each type of ticket that a
guest received, demand would be spread
across the various attractions.
Given the cost of adding the Haunted
Mansion, managers decided to raise ticket
prices, but they partially offset the price
increase by adding another Eticket to each
ticket book. Unfortunately, managers did
not initially analyze the consequences of
adding that additional E ticket. Essen-
tially, the additional premium ticket
flooded the demand for Erides. If the park
sold fifty thousand ticket books in a day
and each book included one additional E
ticket, then this would mean that there
were nowfifty thousand additional E tick-
ets. The problem with that scenario was
that the new Haunted Mansion attraction
had a capacity of fewer than thirty thou-
sand guests per daywhich left a surplus
E ticket demand of about twenty thousand
tickets. Since guests wanted to use all their
E tickets (by definition, for the best rides)
and all the new capacity at Haunted Man-
sion had been absorbed, the next most
attractive alternative was to get in line at
the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Demand Shifting
A third strategy to manage the actual
demand is to find ways to shift it. We are
all familiar with the early bird specials and
reservation policies that restaurants use to
shift demand and the off-peak packages
and discounts that hotels and resorts use
for that same purpose. Similarly, electric
utilities offer pricing differentials to get
people to use less power in peak-demand
periods. These are among the many or-
ganizations that have offered a variety of
ways to shift demand to reduce the wait
times of those who are seeking service.
After-hours party. An example of a
demand-shifting strategy was tried at Walt
Disney World as it sought to better balance
its available capacity with the demand pat-
tern caused by an ever-growing number of
visitors. In the late 1980s and early 1990s,
there was a large increase in on-property
hotel rooms and an associated increase in
the number of on-property guests. This
allowed some creative experiments to be
targeted toward this group of guests. One
promotion was called the Magic King-
doms E Rides Nights. For $10, each
resort guest could stay in the parks for
three hours after closing to ride the nine
most popular attractions. The number of
tickets sold each night was limited to a
predetermined number of guests to ensure
that there would be no wait times at any of
the attractions during the after-hours
party. Instead of wasting their time stand-
ing in the long lines at the most popular
attractions during the day, these customers
nowhad the option of using that time more
productively during the day, because they
could visit those attractions at night with-
out having to wait in line. Not only did the
after-hours participants benefit by not
waiting in lines, but the remaining day
guests also benefited because wait times
for those rides were shorter.
The hotel and restaurant industry has
experimented extensively with revenue
management as a means to manage de-
mand. Kimes defined revenue manage-
ment as selling the right inventory unit to
the right customer at the right price at the
right time.
13
She further suggested that the
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 57
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
definition of right means getting the great-
est possible revenue contribution while
delivering the greatest value to the cus-
tomer. Doing this successfully means a
careful combination of both demand-
based pricing and control over the dura-
tion of customers use of the offered ser-
vice. As demand-based pricing relates to
waits and queues, the linkage between
waiting and the price of a unit of service
capacity is clear. Assuming that the dura-
tion of the service experience is held con-
stant, a services price can be used as an
alternative to waiting. If customers would
rather pay with their wallets than pay with
their time, this preference can be accom-
modated in a revenue-enhancing way.
Pricing may be used to benefit both cus-
tomer and company by offering immedi-
ate, premium-price access instead of the
normal wait. However, this option is less
widely used in situations where customers
pay one price for the entire experience,
such as a theme park, all-inclusive resort,
or cruise. In those instances, as we discuss
below, virtual-queue strategies become a
useful option for both company and
guests.
As duration control relates to a joint
consideration of revenue and waiting time,
managers need to remember that every
minute spent waiting in line is a minute
that the customer is not generating reve-
nue. Thus, it is critical to evaluate any wait
from a revenue-maximization point of
view to ensure that the organization has
provided that optimal balance between the
costs of capacity and the costs of not hav-
ing adequate capacity to serve customers
as they arrive to enjoy the service experi-
ence. Again, as discussed below, virtual
queues allow customers to do two things
at oncethat is, purchase other services
and products while waiting for the primary
service. Enabling such multitasking
can yield important revenue-generating
benefits for hospitality and service
organizations.
Reservation Systems
Reservation systems are a time-
honored demand-shifting strategy. By
making reservations, customers can de-
cide whether the available time slots are
compatible with their own demand pat-
terns and choose whether to accept one of
those slots. Reservations can also help
organizations to optimally allocate their
capacity as they schedule customers to
exactly match available capacity. While
this is not a perfect system, as anyone who
has been bumped from an airline seat or
denied a restaurant reservation can attest,
reservations do provide a means for
matching a fixed supply of capacity with
variable demand.
Reservations systems do not work for
all hospitality organizations. This proved
true, for example, in the mid-1990s, when
some Disney leaders were frustrated with
the long lines on the most popular attrac-
tions. They sought creative solutions to
reducing wait times. Disney knewfromits
own data what the research literature has
shown repeatedlysatisfaction scores go
down in direct correlation to the length of
the wait.
14
One proposed solution was to imple-
ment a reservation system, but it quickly
became apparent that reservations would
not work for theme park attractions be-
cause of the way the service is structured.
With a restaurant or theater reservation,
the customer payment is for a discrete
item. In the case of the theater seat, the
patron buys a ticket for a specific perfor-
mance. At a restaurant, payment is not
given until the meal is concluded. How-
ever, in a pay-one-price theme park, all
58 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
guests pay the admission price to enter the
park and, once inside, expect that they will
have an equal opportunity to see all the
attractions. The problem with using a res-
ervation system in this setting is that the
early-arriving guests would quickly re-
serve and book all the available capacity
on the most popular attractions. Analysis
of guest arrivals and reservation demand
for park attractions indicated that by
approximately 10:30 to 11:00 a.m., all the
capacity for the most popular attractions
would have been already reserved. Those
guests arriving after 11:00 a.m. would
soon discover that they could not get on
any of the most popular attractions
clearly, an unacceptable situation.
Another problem in using a reservation
system in situations where customers
expect equal access to all phases of the ser-
vice experience would be unexpected (but
inevitable) interruptions in service. What
happens to those guests, for example, at an
all-inclusive resort who appear for their
8:00 a.m. sailboat reservation only to find
out that the boats are not allowed out
because of bad weather? If there were no
reservations, those customers would
merely come back later in the day after the
storm passes. However, a reservation sys-
tem would make that unlikely, because a
good system would already have booked
the resorts sailboat capacity for the rest of
the day.
A major limiting factor with a reserva-
tion systemis that it works well only when
there is a fixed and predictable capacity,
such as the number of seats in a theater or a
full-service restaurant. It cannot be effec-
tively used in a dynamic environment with
variable demand and variable capacity,
such as a fast-food restaurant, an attraction
in a theme park, or an emergency roomin a
hospital, where future demand and capac-
ity cannot be accurately predicted and
may vary substantially by the hour or the
day. In those instances, it is not possible to
reserve future units of capacity, since one
cannot be sure how many units will ac-
tually be available or required.
A final problem with reservation sys-
tems is no-shows or late arrivals. When
guests fail to honor their reservations
(either at all or in a timely fashion), an
operation faces a significant decrease in
efficiency due to excess capacity. This is
why many restaurants choose not to take
reservations. They figure that they do not
need to take reservations to fill up their
seats, and they do not want to lose operat-
ing efficiencies and capacity by holding
seats for late arrivals and no-shows. This is
also the reason that hotels and airlines
overbook.
Strategies for Managing
the Perception of Waiting
Rather than manage the wait itself, a
second overall strategy regarding cus-
tomer waits is to manage the perception of
the wait. In this regard, David H. Maister
proposed the following two Laws of Ser-
vice.
15
The first suggests that when cus-
tomers perceive that the waits are as ex-
pected, they will be satisfied and the
service organization may benefit from a
trickle-down effect (when satisfied cus-
tomers tell friends about the good ser-
vice). However, as the second law pro-
poses, that trickle-down effect can work
both ways; an unsatisfactory wait can earn
a bad reputation. Maisters second law
suggests that it is difficult to recover from
a bad waiting experience. That first im-
pression can influence the perception of
and satisfaction with the remainder of the
service encounter. Maisters propositions
about managing the perception of waiting
have spurred a large volume of research.
16
The point of much of this study is that an
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 59
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
organization can and should manage the
perception of waiting to make it more en-
joyable for the customers.
Among those influences on percep-
tion identified in the research are the
following:
1. Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied
time. When customers have nothing to
occupy their waiting time, the wait will
seem longer than if they have something to
keep them busy.
Away to occupy time is to offer diversion-
ary devices. To counter the negative con-
sequences of unoccupied time during a
wait, service organizations can capture the
attention of customers in line and enter-
tain, enlighten, or inform them. That is
why hospitality and service organizations
use such simple tactics as placing mirrors
near elevators in hotels to occupy waiting
guests or providing recorded music to
entertain telephone callers placed on
hold.
17
More complex and expensive tac-
tics include restaurants providing bands
and free hors doeuvres to occupy the time
of its waiting customers.
Theme and amusement parks divert
guests attention with TV monitors strate-
gically placed in the waiting areas to
informcustomers about the attraction they
are about to encounter or simply entertain
and amuse them.
18
Another common di-
versionary device used is the preshow.
This can be either a performer who puts on
a showbefore the showor a series of phys-
ical locations or stations where informa-
tion about the attraction is provided. At
Disney World a portable entertainment set
called Streetmosphere can be rolled out to
entertain guests waiting in a particularly
long line. Although guests are still waiting
for the main attraction, they are given the
illusion that the service has already
started, which improves their perception
of wait time.
19
2. Anxious, sad, and angry waits feel longer
than relaxed ones. If people are afraid of,
angry about, or feeling sad about what will
happen to them once the service experience
begins, the wait will seem longer.
A persons state of mind influences how
long the wait feels. When the nature of the
experience the customer is waiting to have
is such that it produces anxiety, providing
reassurance and information regarding the
nature of the service can reduce that anxi-
ety and make the wait seem shorter. For
example, patients waiting in a doctors
office for an unfamiliar procedure can be
provided with literature or a video de-
scribing the full nature of that procedure.
Airplane departure delays can be made
less anxious by explaining that the cause is
not defective equipment but late-arriving
passengers on another flight. Addition-
ally, anxiety or fear over missing a later
connecting flight can be reduced by
announcing that anyone with connecting
flights will be accommodated at their next
stop. Taking the anxiety out of the situa-
tion by providing full and continuing
information is an effective means for elim-
inating customer fears about the wait and
what might happen next.
When customers are unhappy, sullen,
or feeling negative about waiting, the wait
will feel longer than if they were having
fun, enjoying themselves, and feeling pos-
itive about the wait and the service to
come.
20
Raising guests spirits might be
achieved through offering diversions or
distractions, as discussed above. Enter-
tainment, for example, may lift the cus-
tomers mood. Audiences for television
shows and concerts are often warmed up
by professional comedians or opening
acts to put the audience in the proper
frame of mind. In a similar vein, hospital-
ity customers are often entertained by
bands, jugglers, and clowns, as described
above.
60 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
3. Waits of uncertain length feel longer than
certain ones. If customers have no idea
when the wait will end and the service expe-
rience will begin, the wait will seem longer
than if they have a sense of the expected wait
time.
Dissatisfaction with a wait experience is a
function of the discrepancy between the
wait time expected and the actual wait
time experienced.
21
For example, in a din-
ing encounter, a customer who was ex-
pecting a sixty-minute wait might be quite
satisfied with a wait of thirty minutes. Mean-
while, another customer who also waited
thirty minutes might be quite dissatisfied
if the expected wait was ten minutes.
When the customer is unfamiliar with
the usual length of wait for service, the
length of the actual queue may provide no
helpful information about the likely wait
time, particularly when the customer can-
not see the entire queue. Although not
always true for every type of customer
in every type of line, knowledge of the
length of wait will generally yield positive
customer-satisfaction outcomes.
22
In theme and amusement parks, where
this strategy is commonly used, sign
boards located throughout the parks pro-
vide information on expected wait times at
various attractions. Additionally, when a
guest enters an attractions waiting line,
signs are often provided at various points
in the line indicating expected wait times
from that point forward. Typically, these
quoted times are longer than the actual
times. These parks managers know that
customers who are once told that a wait
will end at a certain time and are willing to
wait that amount of time will become anx-
ious and unhappy once that quoted wait
time expires.
4. Unexplained waits feel longer than
explained waits. When customers do not
know what is holding up a line or causing a
delay, the wait will feel longer than if they
know the reason.
If a person does not know the reason for
the wait, then he or she will assume the
worst possible explanation. Conse-
quently, when there are unanticipated
delays in the service, information should
be provided to the waiting customers
explaining the cause for the delay.
Most hospitality and service organiza-
tions recognize the value of keeping peo-
ple informed and are becoming more
proactive in providing information up-
dates to guests waiting in line. For exam-
ple, explaining that the delay in the doc-
tors office is caused by an emergency
situation being attended to will increase
the perceived value of a lengthy wait.
Likewise, explaining that the flight is held
up by maintenance staffers checking out
everything will provide both an explana-
tion and reassurance that the airline cares
about safety.
5. Uncomfortable waits feel longer than com-
fortable waits. When customers must
endure environmental conditions that cause
discomfort, the wait will feel longer than if
they were in comfortable conditions.
One example that shows the reality of this
point is demonstrated by the experience at
the Superstar Theater at Walt Disney
Worlds Disney/MGM Studios. The at-
traction was designed as a one-thousand-
seat high-energy audience-participation
venue. In all preopening tests, the audi-
ence reaction was extremely positive to
this format. The guests were highly en-
gaged and laughing throughout the show.
After the official opening, however, guest
waits quickly grewto more than forty-five
minutes. The long waits were further com-
pounded by the fact the queue area was
poorly designed, resulting in an extremely
hot and uncomfortable environment.
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 61
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
62 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
Waiting in Orlandos summer heat and
humidity for this length of time meant that
the guests were in no mood to enjoy the show
regardless of howentertaining it was. Instead
of the expected laughter, there was disinterest
and silence. The park took steps to improve
the waiting areas conditions, and after the
summer heat faded and the crowds dimin-
ished, the wait times returned to minimal
levels and the showonce again became a hit.
Providing facilities that enhance the com-
fort of waiting customers can considerably
improve customer satisfaction with the
wait.
23
In a dining situation, offering lobbies
with comfortable seating might be sufficient.
Theme and amusement parks use such
devices as overhead paddle fans, strategically
placed drinking fountains, misters, sprayers,
and overhead awnings and covers. Environ-
mental factors, such as lighting, colors,
ambient temperatures, music, furnishings,
and spatial layout merit thoughtful manage-
rial attention because they affect the custom-
ers comfort, satisfaction, and intent to
return.
24
6. Unfair waits feel longer than fair ones. When
customers feel that others who arrived after
them are being served first, the wait will seem
longer than if customers are served according to
their order of arrival.
Many people feel that first-come, first-served
is the only fair way of sequencing customers
in a service encounter (absent reservations or
some other obvious rule). Equity theory sug-
gests that the level of dissatisfaction a person
experiences in a social context is related to
howfairly that person feels he or she has been
treated compared to others in that same set-
ting.
25
When waiting customers are unsure of
the selection rules governing the wait pro-
cess, believe themto be unfair, or believe that
they are being applied in an unfair way, they
are likely to display higher levels of dissatis-
faction with their wait.
Unfortunately, operating a hospital-
ity business is not that simple. Many
service facilities have more than one
priority for customers, and the higher
priority customer will be served before
the lower priority customer regardless
of arrival order. First-class airline pas-
sengers are seated before early-arriving
coach passengers, for instance. The
customer with a dinner reservation will
be seated before the customer without
one. When situations like these occur,
attempts should be made to disguise
this two-priority system or explain it in
a way that it seems reasonable to those
not getting the priority. Any perceived
inequity should be made as transparent
as possible to the customer. In this way,
customers are less likely to perceive
that they are unfairly or unjustly passed
over, removing that potential source of
dissatisfaction.
26
The Virtual Wait Strategy
Despite all the efforts to manage the
actual waiting experience or to make
the perception of waiting as entertain-
ing and comfortable as possible, waits
can still be a concern to both the organi-
zation and the customer. This is espe-
cially true where waits interfere with
the organizations ability to meet its
guests expectations. At Disney, for
example, in spite of efforts to reduce
both wait times and the perception of
waits, the long lines at the most popular
attractions continued to be a major
dissatisfier for its guests. Therefore, its
managers continue their efforts to come
up with innovative ways of eliminating
the physical waiting associated with
standing in line. This effort and the
availability of new technologies led to
the development of the virtual-queue
concept.
The initial idea was to eliminate the
physical act of standing in line by having
guests register their place in line with a
computer and letting the computer save
their place. Then, when the guests virtual
place in line reached the front, they would
return and immediately enter the attrac-
tion. Instead of having to stand in a physi-
cal line, the guests would be free to use
that time to leisurely visit other attractions
or enjoy the various other activities avail-
able throughout the park.
The virtual-queue concept was first
tested at Disney World in 1998. The pur-
pose of the test was to evaluate the guests
reaction to the concept and to document
how guests spend their time throughout
the day when using the system. The results
of the initial test were positive. Surveys
showed that guests who used this virtual-
queue systemspent substantially less time
in lines, spent more per capita, and saw
significantly more attractions. As a result,
those guests had significantly higher over-
all levels of satisfaction. After a series of
further tests and refinements, the system,
called FASTPASS,
27
was then installed
on five of the most popular attractions at
Walt Disney World in the summer of 1999.
As a result of overwhelming guest re-
sponse, FASTPASS was expanded to all
the Disney Parks worldwide and is now
used by more than 50 million guests per
year.
This virtual queue system is simple for
guests to use. When they approach a
FASTPASS attraction, they insert their
park admission ticket into a specially des-
ignated FASTPASS turnstile, which
places them in a virtual queue. Based on
howmany guests are already in the virtual
queue and the current processing capacity
of the attraction, the computer estimates
how long it will take for their space in the
virtual queue to get to the front of the line.
This estimated time then becomes the
guests designated return time and is auto-
matically printed out on the guests
FASTPASS ticket. They can then leave to
visit other attractions throughout the park.
At the time printed, the guests simply
return to the designated FASTPASS
entrance for direct entry into the attraction
with little or no wait. However, to provide
the guests with flexibility to visit other
attractions and amenities without worry-
ing about missing their assigned time,
they are actually assigned a sixty-minute
window of time during which they can
return. This sixty-minute flexibility was
believed to be vital to ensure that guests
felt comfortable in using that time to do
other things, as it would defeat the pur-
pose of the virtual wait if they did not.
A distinguishing feature of the FAST-
PASS system is that when the guests
approach a FASTPASSattraction, they are
always given two clear choices: (1) they
may choose to obtain a FASTPASS ticket
and come back at a designated later time,
or (2) they may choose to wait in a stand-
by line. To assist guests in their decision,
the attractions signs will indicate what the
designated return time will be for FAST-
PASS and what the current wait time is for
the standby line. For example, they may
have the option of either waiting forty-five
minutes in the standby line or getting a
FASTPASS ticket and coming back in one
hour to enter the attraction with no further
wait in line.
Another unique feature of this process
is that the two lines (the virtual FAST-
PASS line and the physical standby line)
are self-regulatingso that neither one
gets too long. If everyone were to choose
the FASTPASS option, the return time
would get increasingly longer and the
standby line would get increasingly
shorter, until the standby line would be so
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 63
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
short that everyone would then choose the
standby option. On the other hand, if
everyone chooses the standby line
because it is so short, then the standby line
would get increasingly longer until it
eventually is as long as the FASTPASS
return time, at which point everyone
would then once again choose the
FASTPASS option. Therefore, as a result
of this self-regulating feature, the two
lines usually stabilize at the point where
the FASTPASS return time is slightly lon-
ger than that of the standby line.
A key point in making the FASTPASS
system work is that guests always have a
choice. The vast majority of guests choose
the FASTPASS option, which means that
only a relatively small percentage of
guests actually have to wait in line. The
obvious question that this raises is, Why
would anyone choose to stand in line
rather than getting a FASTPASS ticket? It
turns out that most of the guests in the
standby line are people who are currently
holding a FASTPASS ticket for another
attraction and are using that time to see a
second attraction. These guests are usu-
ally satisfied, because they are able to see
two attractions during the time they would
have previously been able to see only one
attraction. The remaining guests in the
standby line tend to be those who are tol-
erant of lines and simply do not mind
waiting.
The standby line also serves the essen-
tial function of filling slack times, just as
standby airline tickets do. Since an attrac-
tions actual capacity varies hour by hour,
it is impossible for the computer to per-
fectly predict how many guests the attrac-
tion will serve the next hour. Therefore, it
is not feasible for the computer to assign
all the available attraction capacity to
FASTPASS guests. Also, to ensure that
the FASTPASS guests do not have to wait
any additional time when they return to
the attraction, it is necessary for the com-
puter to assign less than 100 percent of the
attractions total hourly capacity to the
FASTPASSguests. This ensures that there
is always adequate capacity available to
accommodate all the FASTPASS guests
when they return to board the attraction. If
less than 100 percent of the attractions
capacity is dedicated to FASTPASS
guests at any given time, the standby line
is used to fill in the remaining capacity.
The system works in concept just like the
singles line works at a ski resort. During
peak periods the single line is used to
ensure that every chair goes out with all
seats full.
In addition to the benefits already de-
scribed, the virtual-queue systemprovides
many additional benefits. Previously, dur-
ing peak days many guests spent as much
as three to four hours in a day waiting in
line for the most popular attractions. This
severely limited the total number of attrac-
tions that they could see during the day
and prevented them from ever having
enough time during the day to see many of
the other attractions available throughout
the park. The use of FASTPASS not only
resulted in guests seeing more attractions
during the day, but it greatly increased the
use of all the parks attractions, many of
which previously had little or no wait
times. Another secondary benefit was the
ftio that guests also used some of the time
freed up from lines to engage in other
revenue-producing tioivities, such as din-.out Previouslye to the the8526* (f)10.6(tiy)-181.2(that8-396.3(the)14.4(y)-221.3dugh)-189265.9h hev time
away from visiting the attractions they
wanted to see. This provides significant
benefits to both the guests and to Disney.
Lower perceived wait times have led to
higher customer-satisfaction levels, and at
the same time Disney officials have seen
increases in spending per person on food
and merchandise.
28
The value of this concept has not gone
unnoticed in the hospitality industry. Uni-
versal adapted the virtual-queue philoso-
phy to provide added flexibility for guests
with its Universal Express system.
29
Uni-
versal guests may choose one of two pos-
sible windows of time offered to them.
Furthermore, Universal guests may re-
ceive an Express Pass for up to three at-
tractions at one time and can get another
Express Pass after visiting all three attrac-
tions or after all the chosen windows of
time have passed.
The virtual queue enables companies
that have variable and unpredictable oper-
ating capacity to provide their customers
with the perceived benefits of a reserva-
tion systemwithout many of the problems
and limitations associated with a reserva-
tion system. The primary difference be-
tween a reservation system and a virtual
queue is how the selected time is deter-
mined. With a reservation system, cus-
tomers choose from all available times
which time they prefer to use the service.
On the other hand, with a virtual queue the
computer assigns the customers the time
slot based on its determination of when
the next unit of operating capacity is
available.
This concept has many applications in
both hospitality and other service orga-
nizations, as seen in Exhibit 1. Virtual
queues can be used in a wide variety of
applications where people enter a defined
system and are then willing or can be en-
couraged to participate in a virtual queue,
given that it offers them some advantages
over an actual wait.
Examples of such systems are cruise
ships or all-inclusive resorts where guests,
as in the theme parks, may choose from
multiple activities once inside the system.
Even a restaurant could develop a virtual-
queue application by such schemes as
offering its regular nearby customers the
opportunity to be buzzed for an available
table when capacity is available. They
could be offered some incentive, such as
a discounted, fixed-price dining opportu-
nity, to encourage them to serve as a
standby customer.
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 65
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
Exhibit 1:
Potential Applications of Virtual Queuing
Industry Segment Application
Theme parks FASTPASS; Universal Express
Cruise lines Onboard activities (e.g., rock climbing,
skeet shooting, shore excursions);
dinner shows; restaurants
All-inclusive resorts Resort activities (e.g., sailing, mas-
sage); restaurants; entertainment
Restaurants Fixed-price standbys
Tourist attractions (e.g., national parks) Tours; entrance times
Customer service centers Assigned call-back times
Health clubs Equipment usage
Any freestanding attraction can also be
a potential site for creating a virtual queue.
For example, any individual stand-alone
attraction that has long lines for admission
and entry, such as the Statue of Liberty, the
St. Louis Arch, or the Superdome in New
Orleans, can offer ticket buyers the op-
portunity to enter a virtual queue and be
assigned a time to enter versus standing in
line (and many already do so in some
form). Other service organizations can use
this virtual-queue concept as well. At a
customer service call center, for example,
the phone lines available represent the
capacity and the estimated callers are the
demand. A virtual queue can be created
here as the callers could be given the op-
tion of calling back during a specific win-
dow of time and provided with a personal
code that would ensure that their call is
handled immediately when they call back.
Burrelles transcripts service offers its
callers the option of holding until some-
one can get to them or leaving a telephone
number where the customer can be
reached when the next available time slot
opens up for a Burrelles representative to
call them.
Restaurants effectively create virtual
queues by handing out buzzers to people
and then buzzing them when a table is
available. Some, like Hard Rock, Bahama
Breeze, and Margaritaville, have added re-
tail shopping or provide a bar area to give
people another activity while waiting in
line. The additional benefit is that this
strategy can also be used as a revenue
enhancement while more effectively man-
aging their customers waits.
The virtual-queue strategy is an innova-
tive way of taking the physical waiting out
of the wait. With heavy reliance on word-
of-mouth advertising and repeat business,
hospitality and service organizations can-
not afford to develop a reputation for long
waiting lines and dissatisfied customers.
Virtual queues, however, provide a worth-
while strategy for creating satisfied
customers in waiting lines.
Conclusion
Customers of hospitality and service
organizations generally do not want to
wait for the service they are paying good
money to get. The challenge is to make
sure the actual wait or the perceived wait is
well managed so that any negative aspects
of this service experience caused by the
wait are minimized. We think the most
promising strategy to develop is the virtual
queue. As developed at Disney, this con-
cept offers hospitality and service organi-
zations a new weapon in their arsenal of
tools to diminish the negative aspects of
customer waits. While it might be argued
that this concept would work best in theme
and amusement parks, we think it offers an
innovative approach to managing guests
waits.
The sophisticated organizations in ser-
vices and hospitality have long used a
variety of quantitative models to reduce
actual wait times. Once these models have
maximized capacity use and minimized
customer dissatisfaction as much as they
can, however, managers need to rely on
other tools to keep customers as satisfied
as possible. We have seen in this article
that managing the customers perceptions
of the wait time can be just as important as
reducing the actual wait time. With the
development of virtual queues, however,
this industry can now think of exciting
ways to make the wait virtually invisible.
We think this concept offers many ways to
increase the use of an organizations phys-
ical and human capacity while maximiz-
ing guests satisfaction.
66 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS
Endnotes
1. See, for example, C. U. Lambert and T. P.
Cullen, Balancing Service and Cost through
Queuing Analysis, Cornell Hotel and Restau-
rant Administration Quarterly 28, no. 2 (April
1987): 68-72.
2. For example, see S. Taylor, Waiting for Ser-
vice: The Relationship between Delays and
Evaluations of Service, Journal of Marketing
58 (1994): 56-59; M. M. Davis and J. Heineke,
How Disconfirmation, Perception and Actual
Waiting Times Impact Customer Satisfaction,
International Journal of Service Industry Man-
agement 9, no. 1 (1998): 64-72; D. H. Maister,
The Psychology of Waiting Lines, in The
Service Encounter: Managing Employee-Cus-
tomer Interaction in Service Businesses, ed. J.
A. Czepiel, M. R. Solomon, and C. F.
Suprenant (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
1985); and A. Durand-Moreau, Waiting for
Service: Ten Years of Empirical Research, In-
ternational Journal of Service Industry Man-
agement 10, no. 2 (1999): 171-83.
3. R. C. Ford and C. P. Heaton, Managing the
Guest Experience in Hospitality (Albany, NY:
Delmar, 2000).
4. S. Kimes, Restaurant Revenue Management,
Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration
Quarterly 45, no. 1 (February 2004): 52-67;
M. E. Pullman and G. M. Thompson, Evaluat-
ing Capacity- and Demand-Management Deci-
sions at a Ski Resort, Cornell Hotel and Res-
taurant Administration Quarterly 43, no. 6
(December 2002): 25-36; and S. Kimes, R. B.
Chase, S. Choi, P. Y. Lee, and E. N. Ngonzi,
Restaurant Revenue Management, Cornell
Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quar-
terly 39, no. 3 (June 1998): 32-40.
5. S. Stidham, Analysis, Design and Control
of Queuing Systems, Operations Research
50, no. 1 (2002): 197-218; and C. Haksever,
B. Render, R. S. Russell, and R. G. Murdick,
Service Management and Operations (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000).
6. See, for example, ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ford and Heaton, Managing the Guest Experi-
ence in Hospitality.
9. A set of management strategies for adjusting
staffing levels is found in Gary M. Thompson,
Workforce Scheduling: A Guide for the Hos-
pitality Industry, CHR Reports 4, no. 6 (April
2004), TheCenterforHospitalityResearch.org.
10. See, for example, ibid.; A. Sheel, Monte Carlo
Simulations and Scenario Analysis-Decision
Making Tools for Hoteliers, Cornell Hotel
and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 36,
no. 5 (1995): 18-27; and A. Field, M. McKnew,
and P. Kiessler, A Simulation Comparison of
Buffet Restaurants, Cornell Hotel and Res-
taurant Administration Quarterly 38, no. 6
(December 1997): 68-80.
11. J. Baker and M. Cameron, The Effects of the
Service Environment on Affect and Consumer
Perception of Waiting Time: An Integrative
Review and Research Propositions, Academy
of Marketing Science 24, no. 4(1996): 338-50.
12. Stidham, Analysis, Design and Control of
Queuing Systems.
13. Kimes, Restaurant Revenue Management.
14. A. Durand-Moreau, Waiting for Service;
P. Jones and M. Dent, Improving Service:
Managing Response Time in Hospitality Oper-
ations, International Journal of Operations
and Production 14, no. 5 (1994): 52-59; M. M.
Davis and J. Heineke, How Disconfirmation,
Perception and Actual Waiting Times Impact
Customer Satisfaction, 64-72; and K. Katz,
B. M. Larson, and R. Larson, Prescription for
Waiting-in-Line Blues: Entertain, Enlighten,
and Engage, Sloan Management Review 32,
no. 4 (1991): 44-53.
15. Maister, The Psychology of Waiting Lines.
16. Ibid. Maister discusses eight points that we
have collapsed into six to simplify this dis-
cussion. For example, see also Baker and
Cameron, The Effects of the Service Environ-
ment on Affect and Consumer Perception of
Waiting Time; Jones and Dent, Improving
Service; and Durand-Moreau, Waiting for
Service.
17. P. Jones and E. Peppiat, Managing Percep-
tions of Waiting Lines in Service Queues, In-
ternational Journal of Service Industry Man-
agement 7, no. 5 (1996): 47-58.
18. Ford and Heaton, Managing the Guest Experi-
ence in Hospitality.
19. Durand-Moreau, Waiting for Service.
20. A. B. S. Diaz and F. J. M. Ruiz, The Con-
sumers Reaction to Delays in Service, Inter-
national Journal of Service Industry Manage-
ment 13, no. 2 (2002): 118-41; and Baker and
Cameron, The Effects of the Service Environ-
FEBRUARY 2005 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 67
MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS SERVICE
ment on Affect and Consumer Perception of
Waiting Time.
21. Davis and Heinke, HowDisconfirmation, Per-
ception and Actual Waiting Times Impact Cus-
tomer Satisfaction.
22. See, for example, M. K. Hui and D. K. Tse,
What to Tell Consumers in Waits of Different
Lengths: An Integrative Model of Service
Evaluation, Journal of Marketing 60, no. 2
(1996): 81-90; and Katz, Larson, and Larson,
Prescription for Waiting-in-Line Blues.
23. Baker and Cameron, The Effects of the Ser-
vice Environment on Affect and Consumer
Perception of Waiting Time.
24. Ibid.
25. J. S. Adams, Toward an Understanding of In-
equity, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psy-
chology 67 (1963): 22-36; and R. T. Mowday,
Equity Theory Predictions of Behavior in Or-
ganizations, in Motivation and Work Behav-
ior, 5th ed., ed. R. M. Steers and L. W. Porter
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).
26. Maister, The Psychology of Waiting Lines.
27. FASTPASS is a trademark of The Walt Disney
Company.
28. B. J. Wolfson, Disney Chief Financial Officer
Sees Changes Raising Customer Satisfaction,
Orange County Register, April 11, 2000, www.
ocregister.com; and E. S. Reckard, More Dis-
neyland Rides to Get Shortcut System, Los
Angeles Times, May 26, 2000, www.latimes.
com.
29. T. Barber, Visitors Can Make Reservations
on Most Rides at both Universal Theme Parks
in Orlando, Orlando Sentinel, February
27, 2001, www.orlandosentinel.com; and
D. Wilkening, Passes Cut Attraction Waiting
Times, Travel Weekly 59, no. 36 (2000): 21.
Duncan Dickson, MPS, is anassistant professor
at the Rosen College of Hospitality at the Univer-
sity of Central Florida (ddickson@mail.ucf.edu),
where Robert C. Ford, Ph.D., is a professor
in the College of Business Administration
(Robert.Ford@bus.ucf.edu). Bruce Laval was
executive vice president of operational planning
at the Walt Disney Company (BLaval777@
aol.com).
68 Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly FEBRUARY 2005
SERVICE MANAGING REAL AND VIRTUAL WAITS