Hey everyone!
Our teams are discussing the costs/benefits of having guests choose a date of visit during their online purchase of general admission tickets vs a ticket expiring a year after the date of purchase (which is what we currently do) that can be used any single day.
What are you all doing? What works and what doesn't? We'd love to hear what you've experienced. :)
Shedd requires a specific date for ticket purchases. This helps us anticipate attendance and report on ticket sales. We do scan at entry, but not in a 100% reliable fashion to a point where we can use that data confidently. The main downside is that if someone wants to change their visit date, they have to call to do so.
Georgia Aquarium operates using both scenarios, we have tickets that the guest can purchase a specific date and time through all channels and then we have tickets that are good for a year that can only be purchased through our call center or POS. We prefer the guest to purchase a specific date and time for the same reasons as Shedd (over crowding) as well as using the data for critical business decisions. Our "open-ended" tickets are not sold often and we have not had any major issues regarding having them available.
The Perot Museum in Dallas also uses date specific tickets and additionally, we require timed entry - we have entry times every 30 minutes. Much like Shedd & Georgia Aq, we do this for crowd-control. Our building is relatively small and we need to space out Saturdays & Sundays and Holidays. We've discussed getting rid of the timed element (keeping the date) as we see it as a barrier to the online purchase, but from a guest experience/crowding standpoint, we don't want to pack in too many people.
We do dated tickets as well. We do plan on launching a 'voucher' system in the next little while with a 6 month expiry, but probably at a slightly higher price point. We have lots of people who want to give tickets as gifts...we currently sell gift cards, but a ticket voucher is a nice alternative option.
We don't have any issues with 'capacity' here (huge building); however, we found in the past, when we used to have vouchers, that we would get people coming in years after the original expiry. It was easier to get them to pick a date instead (and do an exchange as needed) instead of dealing with super old tickets).
We at Mystic use date-specific tickets, to help us with predicting attendance, and for N-Scan purposes.
We also have what we call our Mystic Pass, which is attendance within a given time frame (generally mid-February each year, through the end of March the next year). This program is General Admission for the Aquarium, but also a local institution as well (Mystic Seaport). We have guests buy a ticket out of one large performance, set on 12/31 of each year. The N-Scan window for that performance is Feb-next March as mentioned.
Our staff one-site would then use a price type reason under a comp price type to log guests in under each day's General Admission performance, and the guest is given a card-stock ticket with tabs for the Aquarium and the Seaport. At the Seaport, their staff simply scan in the PAH using the N-Scanners we loan them, or they can take off the other tab from the card-stock ticket. It's a bit disjointed, but it's working so far! Apologies if the explanation is clunky.
We also sell many Gift Certificates. On-site, we will also honor older tickets, or tickets that need to be redeemed for a different date- we'll again use a comp price type reason code.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) uses timed and dated tickets for certain paid exhibitions. Mainly so that we can control access into the gallery especially during school holiday periods. However we do find that online sales increase as a percentage of total sales (and therefore the data coming into Tessitura) for events with timed ticketing. Anecdotally we feel that having times slots with low or no availability showing online means that customers who may be getting information online and buying in person onsite, will buy online to avoid missing out. This was really evident for our most recent ticketed exhibition (Wonderland) and I wrote a blog post about our experience - https://labs.acmi.net.au/wonderland-online-purchase-patterns-50d3ba1f98e2
Adding one additional note on this process, for the guests who may need to visit on a different day than they originally purchased, we simply direct them to our will call line or any open admissions window to have the date changed to the actual day of their visit.