E-ticket convenient? Forget it! - BLOG
Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2019At least, according to the Zuyderwijk family. It was during our (Christmas) vacation in Sri Lanka at the end of 2018. Our tour guide managed to convince the family in question to buy tickets to the museum and the ancient temple city of Polonnaruwa online in advance, because they didn't have enough dollars left. Through a cracking Internet connection, the tickets were purchased, with a small allowance of a few dollars. How clever! No queue and straight through, while the rest of the group had to join the back to pay for their tickets in cash on the spot. So far a good story right?
On the day of the museum visit, the Zuyderwijk family, like me, walked into the building and I had to report to the ticket office. They walked straight to the entrance only to be stopped by a museum employee. The e-tickets, which had been painstakingly printed out the night before, were taken. The employee didn't know what to do with them for a moment and reported to the box office, where I had meanwhile ended up at the front to checkout and then the impossible happened....
The tickets were not scanned, even though there was a beautiful QR code on each printed ticket. No, the barcodes (consisting of 13 numbers) were transcribed by the cashier by hand into a thick book. Yes really! All the codes of all the tickets! Then the codes were looked up in the thick book, scratched through and the family was given the admission tickets pressed into their hands. These were the same tickets that we had paid for at the cash register 11 minutes before.
Conclusion: e-tickets work great, provided the organization is also set up for it. E-tickets are precisely for reducing paperwork and labor. In addition, e-tickets should be cheaper than box office prices, which further encourages online sales. Apparently they have heard the bell ringing in Sri Lanka, but haven't found the clapper yet.
Of course, the Zuyderwijk family laughed hard about it and, like me, loved the museum and Sri Lanka!
Do you also want to start selling e-tickets and are ready to get your organization ready for the future? If so, please contact Leisureking For a perfectly working online reservation system.
Erik Kroon - Founder LeisureKing
