“If I had to give you two headlines for the ticketing industry, I’d say the mobile has killed the kiosk and CRM, which can give marketing teams access to the information captured by the ticketing systems.

The buzz in the industry at the moment is about mobile sites. We launched our mobile webstore two years ago and now have 17 customers signed up, 10 of which are live. Mobile sites have so many advantages over kiosks – operators don’t have to buy hardware to sit outside an attraction, which improves the aesthetics and is more cost effective.

Feedback from the Harry Potter Studio Tour shows that people are booking during the evenings, using their iPads. This proves that this technology is driving up admissions by providing a call to action and allowing a speedy purchase.

Mobiles can be effectively used for loyalty schemes. It’s hard to encourage people to keep their ticket with them to scan in restaurants and shops, but they always have their mobile phone, so attractions can swipe a barcode to use to analyse customer behaviour.

Our new product, hot off the press, is our CRM/ticketing system, Gateway Insight. We’re working with Microsoft Dynamics, which allows anything the customer does on the system to be available on CRM. It’s to manage both data and customers and give marketing teams access to data in real time.”

“Our systems are developed by listening to clients and potential clients. A large element of our current focus is on driving up revenue and looking at how our software can help attractions do that. The key thing that we’ve been working on in the last 12 months is how to drive up visitor spend.

Operators want to find out what areas visitors are spending in and profiling visitors, for example to see if different nationalities have typical spending habits. This information allows marketing departments to target campaigns, fine tune offers and use the best channels to reach them.

In response to this, we’re building the ability to capture demographic information at admission, with a barcode on the ticket. This ticket is scanned each time the visitor spends money, which is a non-intrusive way of finding out who they are and what their behaviour is.

Attractions are also interested in loyalty schemes and finding ways of driving repeat business, either by creating memberships or offering discounts to incentivise people to return.

We’ve done lots of work on our members’ CRM system, so we’re capturing more information than before and analysing it to allow better reporting for marketing teams. More sites are catching onto the concept of fast tracking visitors by sending barcodes to their mobile devices – and so marketing to them prior to their visit.”

“Membership systems are an area that attractions operators are becoming increasingly interested in. In response to this, we’ve worked on a number of membership issues: back office membership wizard, which allows the immediate creation and printing of cards; advanced membership creation at point of sale, including photo capture and card printing; the ability for the consumer to upload a photo when buying membership online; and membership renewal online, with the capability to prompt the customer to consider upgrading their membership.

These developments were driven by client feedback, specifically Blenheim Palace, which migrated more than 300,000 annual pass members into its existing VENPoS system at the start of the 2013 season. Memberships can be linked to promotions to encourage additional secondary spend.

 The system has been very effective for Blenheim Palace, as its membership system is a mission-critical system. More than 120,000 annual pass holders are recruited each year and, together with their subsequent visits, they form more than half of the annual visits. 

 The biggest issue in ticketing at the moment, from an operator’s point of view, is encouraging secondary spend and increasing spend per visitor. We’ll see further adoption of mobile technologies and M-commerce, with operators using mobile PoS or PDAs for queue busting or fast track entry.

The biggest consumer trend is using smartphones and tablets for advance purchases and interacting with the attraction on site through social media and apps.”

“Buying tickets through mobile devices and focusing on customers’ purchasing habits in order to become more profitable are two major trends currently evident in the ticketing industry.

Consumer purchases made by mobile devices topped $25bn in the US alone in 2012, and that number will continue to grow each year.

We’ve created the Season Pass and E-Ticketing to tap into the mobile trend and allow attractions’ operators to increase profits by targeting mobile customers. The E-Ticketing platform enables parks to offer customers a completely cashless experience via smart phone technology.

The debit card and mobile-based Season Pass and E-Ticketing allow park-goers to purchase season passes and single-day tickets online or via smart phone and use either a printable ticket or a mobile ticket stored on a smart phone for access to the park.

Customers can then add cash value to their season passes and tickets via smart phone and use them to make purchases at any POS in the park.”

“Our latest innovation is the Interactive Turnstile Transformer (ITT), which we created to transform the traditional turnstile into an opportunity to engage guests, rather than an obstacle which guests need to get through before the fun could begin.

Building on our expertise in the market, and with feedback from key clients, we designed a product which transforms almost any turnstile, counter or desktop into an interactive access control solution.

The ITT can be customised, based on each park’s requirements and can contain a selection of components, including a guest facing LCD touchscreen, an operator facing LCD touchscreen, a 2D barcode scanner, a magnetic swipe reader, an RFID sensor and a biometric reader.

Dollywood installed the ITT this season and selected a guest facing LCD screen to display its themed graphics, user-defined messages and a series of animated, interactive welcome screens. The park also has an operator-facing screen to provide staff with the information needed to greet and assist guests. We’re currently working with a theme park in Asia to integrate an RFID reader and a magnetic reader into the ITT for the 2014 season.

Another evolving area this year has been online, with a higher level of interaction between theme parks and guests. This begins with an online presence which allows the guest to design their visit before they’ve left home, with the creation of an online account which tracks ticket and purchases, reserves events and suggests new activities.

This deeper online relationship can be enhanced during the park visit, through the use of a mobile app, which can allow visitors to update orders, add tickets and shows, or find useful information about wait times, rides or show times.

After the visit, the guest can continue their experience with a link to view online photos from their trip, or an easy option to renew passes for their next visit. New parks, such as Wet’n’Wild Sydney, scheduled to open later this year, will use this approach to enhance guest experiences and open up opportunities for the park to build positive guest relationships.”