How To Maximise Your Ticketing This Christmas

18th August, 2021

To most people, talking about Christmas in August seems pretty excessive! Yet most attractions have already started planning for this years Christmas event, with some way ahead of the curve. For many attractions across the world, Christmas is one of the major months of the year, and many businesses rely on exceptional trading throughout November and December to see them through the quieter winter months. With the lifting of many COVID restrictions and uncertainty over international travel; this certainly is the year of #Staycation.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing!

Within the attraction’s world, it’s pretty common to find most businesses will start planning for Christmas in advance of the Summer Season, aiming to launch between August and late September. Ideally, you would want to have much of your Christmas planning happily ticked off before you are inundated with lots of visitors during the summer holidays. For your marketing strategy, why not follow our top tips to make sure your event outshines the rest!

Check out our top tips and ideas on how to market your event;

• Start advertising early! Whatever your budget, you can reach a wide range of audiences to establish an event that gets more popular year on year.
• Split your marketing into digital and paper; do you have a leaflet, what do you need to display on your website? Are there local marketing companies to use? Do you work with local accommodation providers and DMO’s (Destination Marketing Organisations)? Many have free websites on which you can list your event.
• Remember, social media is free!
• Entice customers by launching premium ticketing early or launch the most popular days like Christmas Eve first to drive traffic and interest.
• Create exclusive discounts for members and social media followers.
• Enhance your offering, by adding additional packages, remembering that the modern visitor is more focused on the experience than ever!
• Populate your website with SEO and keywords to appear higher up on popular search engines.
• Hire a professional photographer for the event, so that next year your marketing is packed with amazing imagery.

Hit The Ground Running

To maximise sales this year, you’ll want to focus on getting your ticketing set up and selling as quickly as possible. Here at DigiTickets HQ, we work with hundreds of attractions making sure they are getting the most out of their ticketing. Once you’ve planned the basics (most importantly how the event is going to run on-site!), start your early marketing releases and then you can start building your ticketing site.

You’ll want to work on maximising your capacity making sure your on-site operation is seamless, the more visitors you get the better the sales! Make sure your ticketing site is clear and of course Christmassy! Pack it with lots of exciting images and theme it so that it gets your customers to get into the festive spirit. Here are some handy features that we think make DigiTickets one of the best Christmas ticketing suppliers around;

• Create beautifully branded Purchase Suggestions to enhance your offer and create additional revenue by upselling.
• Automate your pricing, by using our Pricing Rules portal allowing you to create variable pricing which increases or decreases depending on the date or time. This means you can create premium days; such as Christmas Eve!
• Create an Online Shop featuring your top-selling retail items and fabulous stocking fillers for your customers to find the perfect Christmas gifts.
• Use our Gift Vouchers module to allow customers to gift an experience to family and friends.

All I want for Christmas is… A New Ticketing System

Getting started is easy. We know that preparing for one of the busiest times of the year can be stressful but working with our Team, means that you can get the best support possible when selling both online and in-store. Our Business Development Team is on hand to help work through your requirements, both on-site and online. We understand that the logistics at your attraction often affect the ticket sales set up, which is why our Team are experts in all things tourism. Our dedicated Onboarding Team works with you to project manage your site build, hardware requirements, point of sale installations and training so you can focus on making this Christmas the most magical one yet.

If you’re looking for a new system this Christmas to help you manage your operations, then get in touch today. Don't just take our word for it, here's what some of our clients had to say.

“At Adventure Wonderland, we had been contemplating a move to DigiTickets for some time. The circumstances surrounding our Christmas plans meant we needed a reliable and resourceful system to handle our bookings. It’s been a joy to create a new platform for our ticket sales and we are excited to continue this relationship moving towards a new season.” 

Adventure Wonderland Theme Park, Bournemouth

“Our companies have worked together for such a long time it feels like we’ve really developed and stepped up together. The whole DigiTickets team have always been so accommodating and I know that someone is always on hand at the other end of the phone. You just don’t get that kind of customer service anywhere else. We always recommend DigiTickets to other companies we work with”

Frosts Garden Centre