Christopher BarrettCorethree CEO Ashley Murdoch says there has never been a better time for event operators to embrace mobile ticketing.
Watching your favourite football team or enjoying a Friday night at the cinema might seem like memories from long ago as lockdown has made attending live events a rarity. According to a Feast It study, 61 percent of events businesses believe they only have three months left to survive. This means that ensuring customer safety while strengthening loyalty, as we wait for the vaccine to be rolled-out, needs to become a top priority for the events and entertainment industries to continue moving forward.
There’s still hope, as technology can play a pivotal role in rejuvenating the sector and contributing to growing visitor numbers once venues reopen and audiences return. According to a Juniper study, the integration of mobile ticketing as part of venues’ core strategy could be an opportunity to successfully address safety concerns and restore consumer confidence.
Replacing printed tickets with digital versions can eliminate the unnecessary touchpoints and queues caused by collecting paper tickets at the box office, which can facilitate the spread of the virus.
Customer visibility is crucial for contact tracing and capacity management for social distancing by helping venue staff to manage the flow of people to avoid bottlenecks. Both can be implemented with the help of mobile ticketing, which can be used to directly inform audience members about their – staggered – arrival and start times (known as virtual queuing) and by accelerating the check in process at entrances to avoid overcrowding.
A mobile ticket can act as a digital “flash pass” for each customer, providing unique features such as a dynamic word, colour, and image of the day, while QR codes on a m-ticket or an NFC (near field communications) tag allows an effortless m-ticket activation and validation.
In addition, a digital ticketing app can provide visitors with the most optimal journey to the venue and even a map to help them reach their seats swiftly. Bespoke integrations with maps, transport networks and other data points can be easily accessed through a mobile ticket, further eliminating the risk of overcrowding.
All these mobile ticketing features can lead to the development of better business models and stronger customer relations with the help of data-driven insights. Customer visibility also facilitates the delivery of a more personalised experience as well as enabling direct communication about services such as loyalty rewards. The role of a digital ticket can therefore become invaluable, helping the events industry to welcome their guests back quicker and safer whilst keeping the customer experience at the heart.