# Digital waivers for attractions: who signs, when, and for how long

> A waiver is your terms, signed by each person before they take part and checked at the gate. Where to collect signatures, how minors and guardians work, what the gate refuses, and how long to keep a signature without breaking an erasure request.

*Source: https://itravel.cloud/blog/digital-waivers-for-attractions · published Nov 1, 2026 · topic: Attractions & venues*

A digital waiver for an attraction or activity is your own terms, signed by each person (or a parent or guardian for a child) before they take part, and checked at the gate. It works best when most guests sign on their phone before arriving, a screen at the desk or gate catches the rest, and signatures are kept for the years your insurer or lawyer sets.

This post is about the operations and the software, not the wording. Your lawyer, in the country where you operate, decides what the waiver says, whether it holds and at what age a parent signs. What follows is the part a ticketing system has to get right around those words.

## When does a visit need a waiver?

Venues ask for one when guests accept a risk by taking part: zip-lines, climbing, karting, diving, trampolines, water sports, soft play at a party. Two decisions come before any software. Which products need it, and what it says. Your lawyer and your insurer answer both.

The system then has to allow three things:

- **A waiver for the whole venue, or only for chosen products.** A museum with one climbing wall should not make every gallery visitor sign.
- **The words in every language your guests read**, each guest seeing their own.
- **Versions.** When you change the words, people who already signed keep the version they read.

In iTravel Attractions a waiver is set up under Products → Waivers. It applies to every product of the venue or only to the ones you choose. You write it in as many languages as you need, and each guest reads their own, or the first one you wrote when theirs is missing. Changing the words makes a new version. Changing who signs or how long signatures are kept does not. A waiver you stop using is archived, never deleted, because the signatures still point at it.

## Should guests sign before arrival or at the venue?

Both, in that order. Signing at home is the target. The desk and the gate are where you catch whoever didn't.

| Where they sign | Good at | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Their own phone before arrival (ticket page, tickets email) | Nobody signs in the queue; guests read at home | Not everyone opens the email; one person books for six |
| A screen at the box office | Walk-ups, the guest who forgot | Ties up a till while they read |
| The steward's phone at the gate | The last few at the door | Needs a connection; slows the line at peak |

In Attractions, a ticket whose product has a waiver starts as "needed". The tickets email and the ticket page ask for it. Each person signs for their own ticket, in the reader's language, against the latest version. At the box office, the sold panel shows how many people on the booking still have to sign. It also shows a QR code for the tickets page, so the guest can sign on their own phone, and a "Sign on this screen" button. At the gate, the steward can tap "Sign it here". The person signs on the steward's phone and comes straight in. For how the desk fits into the day, see [running the box office and its cash-up](/blog/box-office-cash-up).

## How do minors and guardians work?

A signing form for families has to get three things right.

1. **Age on the visit day, not on the day of signing.** Someone who is 17 when the booking is made but 18 on the day of the visit signs for themselves when your guardian age is 18.
2. **The guardian age is the venue's choice, not the software's.** Where the line falls, and who may sign for a child, are questions for your lawyer.
3. **A date of birth that can't be misread.** "03/04" is March to one guest and April to another.

In Attractions the waiver asks each person's date of birth unless you switch that off. The guardian age starts at 18 and you change it. Set it to 0 and everyone signs for themselves. Below that age on the visit day, the form will not accept a signature without a parent's or guardian's name. The date is typed as a day, a month picked by its name, and a year. An impossible date such as 31 February is refused in words, and so is a birth date after the visit.

## What should the gate check?

The order of the checks matters. In Attractions the gate phone asks about a ticket in this order: is it cancelled or moved, has it been used already, has its waiver been signed, are required details missing, does it need a weigh-in. Only after all of that does it say valid. An unsigned ticket gets "Waiver not signed" and the line "Not in yet: sign the waiver first."

Two rules keep this honest:

- **It never lets an unsigned ticket in, offline included.** The phone's list for the day records which tickets still need a waiver. Signing on the steward's phone needs a connection. Without one, the ticket simply waits. More on that in [offline ticket scanning](/blog/offline-ticket-scanning).
- **Group admission leaves out anyone with their own check.** "Let in the rest of this booking" counts only the tickets that are ready. Anyone who still has to sign comes in one by one.

One known effect: a ticket moved to another day is issued again, and its person signs again.

## Worked example: a family of four at the door

Say a climbing centre has one waiver for its climbing sessions. It asks for a date of birth, and its lawyer has set the guardian age at 18. A family books four tickets for the 10:00 session on a Saturday: two adults and two children, aged 15 and 9. On Friday evening, one parent opens the tickets email and signs for their own ticket. Nobody else does.

At 09:50 they reach the gate:

| Ticket | Age on the visit day | Signs | Gate answer | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adult 1 | 42 | Signed on Friday, on their phone | Valid | In. "Let in the rest" is not offered: the others still have to sign |
| Adult 2 | 40 | Themselves | Waiver not signed | Signs on the steward's phone, then in |
| Child, 15 | 15 | The child's name and date of birth, with a parent as guardian | Waiver not signed | The form asks for the guardian; then in |
| Child, 9 | 9 | Same | Waiver not signed | Same |

If each signature takes a minute, the family holds the 10:00 line for three. Two cheaper fixes: send guests to the box office QR code before they queue, or ask them at booking to forward the tickets email to each adult. Afterwards, the centre sees all four signatures under Who signed. Each one records where it was given: "On their phone" or "At the gate".

## How long should you keep signed waivers, and what must erasure not delete?

The keeping period exists for one reason. A claim can arrive years after the visit, and the signature is your answer to it. So count from the visit day, not the signing day. Set the number of years with your insurer and your lawyer: how long someone has to bring a claim depends on the country and on the claim.

Data-protection law pulls the other way. Under the EU's GDPR, for example, [Article 5(1)(e)](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj) says personal data should be "kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary". Article 17(3)(e) of the same regulation says the right to erasure does not apply where processing is necessary "for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims". Your own law may say something similar or something different, and your lawyer decides how it applies to you. For the software, it means two separate mechanisms:

- **The end of the keeping period removes the person automatically**, without anyone remembering to.
- **An erasure request does not destroy a signature that is still inside the period**, and says so.

In Attractions you pick 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15 or 25 years for each waiver. It starts at 7, a starting value you change, and is counted from the visit. A job that runs every hour removes the person from every signature whose years are over, on the venue's own calendar day. The name, date of birth, guardian, email and a fingerprint of the internet address they signed from all go. What stays is the record that this ticket's waiver was signed: which version, when, and where it was given.

An erasure request is handled under Settings → Personal data, where you look the guest up by email. The preview shows what every product holds about them. It counts the waiver signatures that are kept until your keeping years end. Any signature already past those years is masked straight away. The erasure is refused while the guest still has something open: a ticket to use, a refund on its way, a rental still out, a membership still running.

## What do staff see at the desk and the gate?

A waiver list is personal data, so show staff only what the job needs.

- **Who signed** (under each waiver) lists signatures newest first. You can search by the start of a name or guardian, or by email, ticket code or order. Open a signature and you see the exact words that person read, ready to print. A CSV holds the lot. Once a person has been removed, their signature leaves the list and the CSV, and the page says how many were removed.
- **The gate phone holds as little as possible.** For a named ticket (sold to one person with an ID number) it carries only the first name, an initial and the last four characters of the ID.
- **An ID number a guest gives is stored encrypted** and shown only on that order's own pages.
- **At the rental desk, a document held as a deposit is described, never numbered** ("driving licence"), as covered in [equipment rental booking](/blog/equipment-rental-booking).

The rest of the activity side, from who can take part to weigh-ins and rentals, is on [activity booking software](/activity-booking-software). The whole system is on [attraction ticketing software](/attraction-ticketing-software).

## Checklist before the first signed waiver

- [ ] Your lawyer has written the words in every language you sell in, and set the guardian age.
- [ ] Your insurer and lawyer have set how many years signatures are kept.
- [ ] The waiver applies only to the products that need it.
- [ ] Your tickets email asks guests to sign, and you have tested it by booking and signing on a phone as a guest would.
- [ ] Box office staff know the two routes: the QR code for the guest's phone, or "Sign on this screen".
- [ ] Gate stewards know that "Waiver not signed" means not in yet, and that signing at the gate needs a connection.
- [ ] You have decided what happens to a guest who won't sign, under your own refund terms.
- [ ] When you change the words, you have checked that a new version appeared and that earlier signers keep theirs.
- [ ] You have run an erasure preview on a test guest and read what it keeps.