Warrnambool's Winter Wonderland
Case Study
A Winner for Families and Progressive Festival Management
- Fun for Kids: Easier for Festival Organisers
- Less expensive online ticketing means less work for everyone
- Barcode scanning provides security and new strategies for queue management
How do you reduce the cost of ticketing a large, multi-day event and still provide strong security and easy access for families with young children?
background
Launched in 1998, the Fun4Kids Festival is the winter holidays' highlight for more than 25,000 visitors every year. Celebrating the imagination and creative spirit of children, a magical 2.5 acre indoor 'village' is created in the heart of Warrnambool as part of this not-for-profit event produced by the Warrnambool City Council.
The Festival is proud to have been inducted into the prestigious QANTAS Australian Tourism Award 'Hall of Fame' - after been voted Australia's best festival 2006, 2007 and 2008.
Festival visitors can also enjoy the beautiful Great Ocean Road's stunning beaches and lush hinterland all on Warrnambool's doorstep.
Ticketing for the Fun4Kids Festival is an enormous undertaking. It begins early May with an order form sent out to the event's mailing list and a multi-media marketing campaign. Families and individuals can buy one-day tickets or 8-day Festival passes. Upon presentation of their tickets, attendees receive wristbands (multi-day entry) or hand stamps for pass-outs during their day at the festival. Until 2009 all tickets, except for box office walk-ups, were posted after being bought either through the post or over the phone or Internet. Processing payments, confirming tickets, printing and posting tickets was a laborious process that required a large staff budget and hours of work.
Rebecca Elmes, the Events and Promotion Coordinator for Warrnambool City Council also performs the role of Ticketing and Marketing Manger for the Fun4Kids Festival. In it's 11th year, the Festival continues to evolve and improve as new technologies and opportunities become available. "We look at processes each year and ways we can improve procedures and systems. A colleague brought me some information about Trybooking and I saw an opportunity for some substantial cost savings," explained Rebecca. "Being able to barcode our tickets would also enhance security, especially for our multi-day tickets."
solution
Ticketing costs were slashed by eliminating the need to print and post tickets, and by reducing the time staff spent on the phone processing ticket orders. "We used to pay a software licensing fee, hire a ticket printer and pay for outside staff to ticket the festival. Those cost were either cut or reduced this year."
Festival organisers weren't the only financial beneficiaries of TryBooking's fee structure. For the first time attendees paid less for online tickets than for phone, post or box office tickets. As they could instantly print their tickets at home, they eliminated handling and postage fees and didn't have to wait for tickets to arrive in the mail. "When people phoned for tickets staff would say 'Are you aware you can purchase online, save the handling fee and immediately print your tickets?' We sold 35% more online tickets and had to do a lot less work as a result," Rebecca continued.
To enhance security and to eliminate the possibility of people printing multiple tickets, Rebecca added a barcode to tickets. The unique barcode ensured that tickets couldn't be duplicated and enabled staff to scan tickets at multiple entry points with TryBooking's wireless Gatekeeper software. Responding to the new technology required Rebecca and her team to alter the way they approached queue management. Simple adaptive strategies, like encouraging attendees to prepare their tickets for quick scanning and moving checkpoints soon had the crowd out of the winter weather and into the festival grounds.
"We still had quite a few people buying tickets at our box office, so each morning we pre-printed tickets and sold these to speed up the process at the door. One queue we completely eliminated was the 'held-tickets.' In the past we stopped posting tickets 10 days before the event, so people had to queue to pick up their tickets when they arrived at the festival. Now with print-at-home tickets people could buy tickets just before they arrived and go straight in," said Rebecca.
Rebecca is enthusiastic about the Reports. "I've found the Reports to work better than our previous system. I like how the reports come out - they are more useful and relevant to what I need to know. Seeing actual numbers immediately, in real-time, is great. The reports are very user friendly and I think Accounts found them very useful as well."
"As far as setting up our event ticketing on TryBooking - well, it's excellent. The whole package is extremely user friendly. It took me just an afternoon to set up the entire event. I hadn't set up an event online before - because it was always too complicated to even attempt doing on my own. If you're a first time user and have never set up an event, TryBooking is still easy to do," summarised Rebecca.
conclusion
"There certainly have been savings. It is an efficient, effective system and the more we can drive people online the more savings and efficiency we'll achieve next year. Also, the support has been excellent. The team at TryBooking went above and beyond and were very responsive."
