Ticket Strategy

Factual Questions
1

Mods: If you think this is more IMHO territory feel free to move it

I am putting together a multi day film festival, and I am trying to come up with a simple (for the patron and for me) ticketing system. Here are the parameters:

  1. It’s a 5 day festival. You would pay by the day regardless of the number of movies you see on any particular day (flat single day price)

  2. Someone can buy a single day ticket, or a 2 day, 3 day, 4 day or All Access pass at an increasingly larger discount

  3. For every day someone attends I have to pay a $1 fee to the theater, and that means that I have to collect a ticket stub for everyone who sees at least one film on any given day (so I can provide the theater with an accurate count)

I was originally thinking of selling single day tickets that are good for any day, and multi-day passes that are good for multiple days. This would require me to print only 5 types of tickets (single day, 2-day passes, 3-day passes, 4-day passes and All Access passes), but I need to be able to rip off a ticket stub for each day and you can only rip off one ticket stub per ticket. I can’t afford to buy, and don’t have access to, any kind of ticket scanning system.

I’m think that to accomplish everything I need I would have to print separate single day tickets for each day and somehow bundle them together so I can discount them, but that means that patrons would have to know which days they want to come in advance and that defeats the purpose of the multi-day pass allowing them to come to whatever days they want and not have to decide in advance.

Is there a better way to do this that I just haven’t thought of yet?

2

Why not just print up single day tickets. If someone buys a two-day package, they get two. Someone who buys a 5-day package gets 5.

Of course, with that system, 5 people could all go in on a 5-day package and each use them on the same day, but 1) how many people would you expect to do that and 2) do you really care?
ETA: you could mark each ticket with a different color marker for the day it was used so that stubs from the first day couldn’t be used on day two.

3

You came across something I don’t want to happen… someone getting the 4-day discount and using their ticket on the same day with 3 of their friends so yes, I care.

I don’t quite get your second suggestion since the stubs are for my tallying. The part of the ticket they get to keep is a souvenir and obviously can’t be used for another day (since the stub it missing). If they want to leave the theater and then come back the same day they would have to get their hand stamped.

4

How complicated is your discount schedule? Let’s suppose it’s just one fee (say $10) for one day, and a constant price (say $6) for each additional day.

Print passes (sold for $4) AND stubs ($6 each). To enter, a guest shows his pass AND gives you one of the stubs.

5

nm

6

If you’re printing the tickets yourself, which it sounds like you are, then you could do this with a ticket + ID system. Get the attendee’s name(s) from the purchaser, print the tickets like so (rough MS Paint rendering, but include what you need to), instruct your ticket takers to rip off one stub per day, and only accept the ticket from the named individual.

You could skip the name and ID part if you can accept the risk of sneaky back-passing ticket-ninja schemes, which personally I would think you could, but that’s up to you. Other than that, per your parameters, you absolutely need a way to associate a given individual with a given ticket, and that involves either scanning (which you ruled out) or checking ID…so as best I can tell, those are your options.

7

well how about this
Print a one day entry voucher , and a two day entry voucher and a three day entry voucher. They aren’t for tearing up, it says in big letters “DO NOT TEAR , NOT FOR INDIVIDUAL USE”.
So a 3 day pass has rows

DAY ONE FESTIVAL ENTRY
Circle date of use
June 25 June 26, June 27 , June 28, June 29
DAY TWO FESTIVAL ENTRY
Circle date of use
June 26, June 27 , June 28, June 29
DAY THREE FESTIVAL
Circle date of use
June 27 , June 28, June 29

The five day ticket only has to a date for each day,

DAY ONE FESTIVAL ENTRY
Circle date of use
June 25
DAY TWO FESTIVAL ENTRY
Circle date of use
June 26,
DAY THREE FESTIVAL
Circle date of use
June 27
etc
Anyway, ticket checking is pretty simple, you circle the date of use, and check the ticket isn’t being used for the same DATE TWICE.

As well, on the side, there is the removable theatre entry ticket, which if it is present, means “remove me”. I guess the problem with theatre entry is re-entry …
If they have a three day ticket, they’d have three theatre tickets, but what if they go in three times on the first day ?

So put the date on ??
[THEATRE ENTRY Jun 25 Not valid with out valid entry date circled]
[THEATRE ENTRY Jun 26 Not valid with out valid entry date circled]

Or don’t put the date on,

because like the staff can see the “FESTIVAL ENTRY” DATE , for todays date, and if there is a THEATRE ENTRY for it still attached to to the row for today, they remove it, if its already been removed, its re-entry, no stub, accurate count.

8

OR you can put DAY 1 , DAY2, DAY 3 on one line, - for a one day ticket, its only got DAY 1, for a five day ticket, its DAY 1 to DAY 5…

and then “JUN 25”, “JUN 26” “JUN 27” “JUN 28” “JUN 29”, “JUN 30” on another. The date of use is marked by drawing a line down from the first unused DAY (the proof of payment for entry) , to the DATE its used on. (the proof the customer is reentrying, if it is that date. )

In this case, ticket checking is pretty simple, you mark the first unused “DAY” (eg first of 3 ) by drawing the line to the DATE its used . The second DAY area gets marked with the second DATE used. The ticket people have spares to issue replacements if they incorrectly mark the entry.
OR, if you don’t want ticket checkers writing on the ticket , then you can have the five dates on removable sections of the the voucher… so if its a three day ticket, and there’s three dates are removed, not including today, then its all used up. This is just the equivalent of the hole punch boxes on other tickets, the person knows that its used up when its had three previous dates punched, and its just rentry if todays date is already punched.

As well, on the side, there is the removable theatre entry ticket, which if it is present, means “remove me”. I guess the problem with theatre entry is re-entry …
If they have a three day ticket, they’d have three theatre tickets, but what if they go in three times on the first day ?

So put the date on ??
[THEATRE ENTRY Jun 25 Not valid with out valid entry date circled]
[THEATRE ENTRY Jun 26 Not valid with out valid entry date circled]

Or don’t put the date on,

because like the staff can see and read and count, right ? SO it could just be three theatre tickets for a three day voucher…

Or if they have to give a ticket for each reentry, and you dont mind, you just dont want to pay the theatre unnecessarily, you can give them 50 tickets, or you can just do it at the door with fresh tickets.

The theatre knows you could sneak 100 extra people in each session, but he can’t be bothered policing you, you also don’t want to rip him off because there may be photos taken and then your festival has its final year, perhaps its final day prematurely, or its final movie being the first.

9

Isilder got it.

You actually only need one single ticket type, but doing so would involve a bit more messing about. You could usefully create two only, a single day pass, and a multi-day. The trick with the multi day would be to pre-invalidate some of the ticket components.

The usual, and difficult to subvert, trick is to use a hole punch to mark the ticket use.

A table across the ticket, columns are the ticket use, rows are the days the festival is on for.

The rule is simple. Ticket is valid on a day so long as that day has never been punched in any row. The rows reduce along the ticket as Isilder describes. First use day has all days available, last column has only the last day. You can pre-invalidate a column by punching out the day number at the top of the column. Tickets are only valid if whole.

10

That’s your big problem. If patrons can just show up on whatever day they want, how do you know that more patrons won’t show up on a single day than can fit in the theater?
Sure, you can tell them to come back tomorrow and mildly piss them off, but what if it’s the last day? Then they are stuck with paid tickets that they can’t use and will be wildly pissed off. The other alternative is to only sell, in total, the maximum number of tickets that can fill the theater once, but then you risk a lot of empty seats going to waste and turning away customers with cash in hand.

I don’t think there is a practical way to sell a “come whatever day you want” pass. You need to have a handle on what day(s) the patrons are planning to show up.

But if you are OK with that…

Allowing patrons back in with a hand stamp also presents the problem that a patron will come in, get a hand stamp, and go back out and give his ticket to a friend. In addition to having a stub to tear off, you need to somehow mark the ticket so that it is no longer valid on the day it was used.

I would suggest printing up tickets with 5 stubs attached. If someone wants a 5-day pass, just leave all the stubs attached. If someone wants a 3-day pass, detach two of the stubs before giving it to them. This also provides a check on the ticket-sellers. You can make them return the unused stubs and check that they are remitting the correct amount of money to you based on the number of stubs that they return. The ticket itself would have to have something like “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” printed on it. When the customer shows up at the theater, the ticket taker should remove one stub and draw an X (or punch a hole) in the number corresponding to the day, so that the ticket could not be reused on that day.

11

Checking IDs and circling dates would take too long. I think this is probably the best solution, assuming I can find ticket stock that is perforated the way I want. I don’t want my ticket takers to be cutting off stubs with scissors…

12

If you’re going to be printing 5 different tickets anyway (one day, two day…) then you need not bother with stubs and perforated ticket stock. Print the tickets to say

SINGLE DAY PASS – GOOD ON ANY ONE DAY

then a list of dates 5/6 5/7 5/8 5/9 5/10

and another

TWO DAY PASS – GOOD ON ANY TWO DAYS with the same list of dates. Lather, rinse, repeat for 5 different styles. Sellers just need to be careful to provide the correct pass to the purchaser. You can of course add color coding – say an item of line art that you print in 5 different colors on the 5 different tickets – just as a visual reminder.

Ticket takers just use a hole punch to punch out today’s date on each ticket presented. And be instructed to simply examine the tickets for previous holes. A SINGLE DAY PASS with a hole in it is fully used up, and should be denied entrance if presented again. A TWO DAY with one hole and today’s date unpunched is valid today. Et cetera. Your ticket takers just need to be mindful that they must actually examine the tickets presented.
You could set these up in any word processor and print onto, say, perforated card stock so they’ll have the “feel” of tickets. Add some art and the usual description of the event. I’ve used Avery #5371 or equivalent (intended for business cards, 2 x 3[sup]1[/sup]/[sub]2[/sub] inches) for a number of events. It yields 8 per page.
Oh, and be sure to include something about “no refunds for unused tickets” or you’ll be hounded by people who over-bought or just didn’t get around to attending their full measure of purchases.

13

Thanks CannyDan, but one of my requirements is that I have to tally the number of people who attend at least one of the showings at any particular day. So I need to have a stub that I can count at the end of the day. There’s a $1 charge for every unique attendee per day I have to pay.

14

I see! That does complicate matters. I guess you’re just stuck with multi-part tickets.

15

Get five sets of tickets five different colors. You can buy them at Office Max, and they look like movie tickets used to look like when I was a kid in the 70s. Send people receipts, instead of tickets. Have them show the receipt for a ticket-- it’ll say 1; 1 2; 1 2 3; etc. Either punch, or mark off a day on the receipt, and then hand the person a ticket. They come as singles you can tear, or doubles you can use to give the person a whole ticket as a day’s in-and-out pass. Print really big on the receipt NOT GOOD FOR RE-ENTRY; SAVE YOUR TICKET! You can still stamp hands if you think people will pass tickets around.

Your real profit will be in food, if you sell it. Or rent booth space to other people.

16

Another way I could do it would be have colored Tyvek wrist bands that would be one use only. A wrist band could be used all day long, and wouldn’t be easily transferable to someone else. If you purchased 2 different days you would get a discount and 2 different colored wrist bands, purchase 3 days you would get a bigger discount and 3 different colored wrist bands etc. I could then use the sales data to determine how many days were sold, and assume that people are going to show up and pay the $1 fee regardless of whether they do or don’t. It’s not perfect, since they have to know which days they want to attend in advance, and I end up paying the $1 fee regardless of if they show up or not, but it deals with the in and out and ticket sharing issues.

17

That should have said “Another way I could do it would be have colored Tyvek wrist bands that would be used for one day only.”

18

Get a roll of two part raffle tickets, the kind where you take one and keep one. Tell all your customers they need to use them for some special raffle. Use the raffle tickets as a way to count your customers, and don’t give a prize.

19

This seems much easier for all concerned than any of the other ideas. Just sell the bands, up to the daily limit, and admit people with the right bands on each day. No validation procedures, no complicated accounting. A couple music festivals I know work this way.

20

Would it work of you printed all the tickets with all 5 days on them, then if someone buys three days, you tear off the stubs of the two days they don’t want, before handing it to them?