Ticketing
parkworld-online.com
One price fits all?
In recent years a number of attractions have been
experimenting with dynamic ticket pricing. Also known as yield management, the principal is the same as that employed by the budget airline industry – pricing inventory according to demand so that a guests pays more to enjoy the park on a peak day, the pay-off being that cheaper tickets are available off-peak. Companies such as Pricetag in the Netherlands (see facing page) specialise in advising parks on how to do it, but increasingly many ticketing providers are also offering dynamic pricing as part of their systems. “One price fits all is still popular with general admission venues,” notes Gateway’s Scott Lobaugh, however we are seeing interest in ability to modify pricing based on time of day or even day of week.” “We has been working with clients to help them achieve sometimes very complex pricing structures,” says Stephanie Dieryckx of Syx Automations in Belgium. “Our ReCreateX software enables clients to change prices according to visit date, time of day, quantity of tickets and time slot. This enables a ticket price to change online if the ticket is bought several weeks, days or hours ahead of the day of visit. “ “Our BOS product offers lots of flexibility in managing dynamic ticket prices based on date, time, volume, types of other products being purchased, length of time before visit, type of guest, sales channel etc,” adds John Davies at OmniTicket. “This is now a core request from most clients.” “We have been involved very heavily in dynamic pricing, in fact it's the essence of the Parafait ticketing system,” concludes Iqbal Mohammad at Semnox Solutions. “We have customers who are
experimenting with ride level pricing – changing the prices of the rides even within the same day. We have also seen some venues do away with the entry fee in favour of pay-as-you-go, variable level ride pricing.”
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All these items can be packaged into one ticket or wristband, or can be sold as a selection of individual tickets.
Do you also offer payment/debit card products – and how are these integrated with your ticketing products? John Davies, OmniTicket Network – Yes, we integrate with many different payment/debit card products around the world, and have recently rolled out several end-to-end encryption solutions using tokenisation.
Iqbal Mohammad, Semnox Solutions – Our system is built on a payment/debit card platform. In fact the ticket could be a card, wristband, key chain, anything for that matter. This one product can hold entitlements like entry, locker rental, rides, food and so on.
Is cashless payment the future for parks and attractions? Julie Acomb, Gatemaster Systems – Absolutely, it is much easier for customers, especially at waterparks, to not carry cash and to be able to make purchases with their membership card or season pass. Scott Lobaugh, Gateway Ticketing – It is certainly heading that way and is already a given in most waterparks. The question is which type of “media” will a venue use to deliver it? RFID is getting a lot of attention but is still considered a bit pricey compared to barcode. We offer both, and can work with clients to understand which media is best for their facility and operations. JD – Many of our clients want to give their guests the option to have a convenient and seamless “cashless experience” throughout their park, which at the same time hopefully increases overall guest spend. The costs behind a cashless solution can deter some parks from implementing this option fully, and it's important to have a comprehensive plan that includes co-operation from all areas of the venue (marketing, IT, operations, finance). For now, all of our clients also require the ability to accept a variety of payment types, including cash and often even foreign currency,
Ticketing via tablet!
therefore I have not heard of any client planning to go completely cashless anytime soon!
Are you surprised that some waterparks still use cash, and they losing out on in-park sales as a result? SL – I certainly believe waterparks are missing out on a great opportunity. Packaging stored value with admission products on a media that fits your facility, a media that makes it easy for increased guest spending, has been proven to work time and again. It really comes down to a facility being ready to make the investment in technology that will improve the guest experience and their bottom line. Walking through the return on investment with customers is a great exercise; they need to see the potential prior to being fully invested. IM – We do think the waterparks are losing out, yes. Obviously it is not possible to carry cash around and people will not keep walking to their lockers. The impulse sale is not at all possible unless you have some kind of cashless system.
Are there any other ticketing trends we should know about? JD – More than ever ticketing systems need to be able to effectively interact with other key systems both inside and outside the park. For example most parks want the ability to sell a ticket either on site or online and automatically update a related client account record, their social media site and a photo pass system. SL – Business Intelligence is really driving parks and attractions to consolidate their revenue collection systems. Demographic and transactional data gathered from these revenue collection points is gold to facilities, and it’s not just the large attractions that are thinking this way! We are helping attractions of all sizes use technology to fuel their businesses. Other trends we’ve been seeing include loyalty, payment plans, e-consignment, CRM- integration and cloud-based ticketing options.
ABOVE: Semnox Solutions’ Shreyas Rai (left) and Umesh Prabhu (right) with Hakan Polat from the Dream Park FEC chain in Turkey, for which Semnox recently provided an automated ticketing system RIGHT: Gatemaster’s point-of-sale screen
MARCH 2014
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