This idea has been growing with me for a while - there are very few attraction owners or operators that actually want a ticketing system!
Bear with me, it's like my family (me excluded) who don't ever want a drill, they want the nice warm feeling they get from looking at the picture on the wall. Now I know that to hang said picture I'm going to have to get my drill, make a hole, use a wall plug and screw and make sure that the thing is level.
So similarly, I believe that the majority of attraction owners and operators don't actually want a ticketing system. They want lots of visitors having a great experience with their collection, park or attraction. They want the guest's experience to be very positive and would like to remove any barriers to that. Ultimately they want to know who the super fans are, what they like and dislike and how to get more of them. As a ticketing system geek I know that a ticketing system can help or hinder this process, but does the average attraction owner or operator care unless it's catastrophically bad?
The recent attractions website survey by Rubber Cheese https://rubbercheese.com/survey/ shows that on average 80% of web site users are on a mobile device, yet less than a third of attractions report any testing of their site using a phone. As a techie geek this astounds me, but is this just an illustration of my point? At a recent industry event I saw an award for ticketing going to a venue I have yet to visit so while at the ceremony I checked on my phone. It didn't work! So even as an industry celebrating successes we aren't looking from the guest's perspective
I often lament the poor state of many of the systems in regular use across the whole world of attractions (see other LinkedIN posts!) Could this be one of the reasons that the industry is still so poorly served by both out of date legacy solutions and more modern point solutions that aren't complete and don't serve the whole requirement?
So what's the solution?
There are some full service providers out there that will provide a totally managed service. To extend the photo analogy further, they will come to your house and put the photo up for you, however the photo will be of their family, not yours!
While the rest currently requires that the attraction operator has much more involvement than it appears they really want. Isn't it time for a different approach?