The Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, home of the Western Hockey League (WHL)’s Victoria Royals and the largest arena in the Canadian province British Columbia outside Vancouver, is gearing up for increased event activity amid waning pandemic restrictions. As more visitors and staff use the arena facilities, the stadium needed to update its access control and identity management system.

The arena installed a cloud-based identity verification system from Active Witness that utilizes touchless access by allowing users to use mobile credentials and facial verification instead of facial recognition. Once an end-user’s email and name has been added to the Active Witness app, a QR-code will be accessible through the app or an image file that will be automatically emailed upon enrollment.

"Moving our access control to the cloud has simplified our user enrollment and administration," said George Fadel, Senior Director, Marketing at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. We were able to deploy the system quickly and our staff will really enjoy the use of mobile credentials instead of having to carry around keycards."

In an event center as large as the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, with a total capacity of 7,000 seats, managing real-time access data is becoming increasingly important to maintain safe operations for both staff and patrons. With real-time access data and touchless access, operational staff can react more quickly to security as well as health and safety protocols and procedures in their facilities.