As a popular tourist destination, Lincs Aviation Heritage Museum is no stranger to hosting large events throughout the year. From period dance events and large airshows to firework nights, thousands of visitors pass through the gates of the museum within a short period of time.
For years, online ticket sales were followed up with individually posted paper (physical) tickets. Whilst it was okay for customers, it proved time consuming from an admin. perspective.
With the new website development well underway, the next phase to integrate was that of 'joining the data' we already had for online ticket sales, and adding more information to those outputs.
The brief was therefore to help fully digitise the ticketing experience through the website, ensuring that all bases were covered; when developing a digital solution you need to ensure there are plenty of 'fallback' procedures in place (internet and wifi connections between entrance gates that are almost a kilometre apart!)
Having already built the Event Tickets online shopping facility into the new website, the next stage required the existing order confirmation emails to auto generate a unique QR code that could be scanned by any modern device (be that mobile phone, tablet or specific plug-in QR code scanner).
As long as these staff devices were able to connect to a data signal or wifi connection, the system would be able to recognise the individual QR code and take that user/member of staff to the secure Ticket Management Area. As anyone can effectively scan a QR code we needed to ensure that a ticket couldn't be accessed/tampered with, thus requiring secure authorisation once the QR url is triggered.
Once scanned, the staff member's device (already pre-authorised) takes them to a screen verifying the information on the ticket. Members of the public could therefore present either a print out of their email confirmation/ticket, or as is preferrred, simply present the email confirmation on their phone at the venue.
The system is smart enough to know how many 'tickets' each customer should have, thus if a customer purchased tickets on behalf of family or friends (who for argument's sake arrived at the venue separately), by scanning the same ticket confirmation it can tell how many tickets were allocated to that group, how many had already been scanned, for example at another gated entrance, and thus how many tickets remained unscanned.
Numerous fallbacks were added to the system to speed the process of scanning/ticket identification.
Invariabily, during the first live event, a couple of customers neglected to bring their tickets along at all! Thankfully a quick look up of customer details to confirm their details and the visitor was swiftly through and enjoying the event.
The rest of the first event proved that the system was more than capable of quickly and efficiently validating visitors through the gates and on to enjoy a wonderful event at the centre.
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