Kath Mainland explains how its ticketing partner, Red61, has enabled Edinburgh Festival Fringe to solve its perennial queuing problems
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe had been around for about a decade when in 1957 its participants decided to establish the Fringe Society. One of the most important things that our farsighted predecessors wanted the new body to do was run a box office so that, for the first time, it would be possible to buy tickets for all the different performances taking place on the Fringe. Today that remains one of our core responsibilities.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has grown to the point where in 2011 we had 41,689 performances of 2,542 shows in 258 venues across the city. A ticketing operation on that scale means we require partners for whom the Fringe is not just another contract, and Red61 have shown a comprehensive understanding of and enthusiasm for the Fringe.
The Fringe is an open access festival, and is therefore a collaboration of venues, promoters and performers. The ticketing network has 26 sales sites, the largest city-wide ticketing network in the UK. VIA’s unique infrastructure of data, inventory and sales servers ensures that it is near impossible for the network to fail. It is a very efficient system and one which very much meets the changing needs of our audience. The speed and simplicity of the automated ticket collection functionality is helping us to combat one of the perennial challenges that we have faced from the public over the years – the length of the queues at our box office.
Prior to our partnership with Red61, the Fringe Society ran one central box office from which all tickets had to be collected as well as being the primary location outside the venues where tickets could be purchased. Over the past few years we have seen the proportion of tickets sold online grow steadily to the point where it is now the means by which a majority of the tickets are purchased. Audience members who have taken advantage of the efficiencies of purchasing their tickets either on our website or on their mobile phones do not want to get snarled up in a lengthy queue to collect those tickets. Thanks to Red61 we now have different locations across the city centre where the public can collect pre-purchased tickets. But what is really impressive about this process is the speed with which VIA can process a ticket collection request. The customer can process their ticket collection transaction in seconds which allows for what would otherwise be a lengthy queue to be dealt with in minutes.
As the Chief Executive of the Fringe Society I am delighted that VIA delivers such a fast and efficient ticketing operation which frees up our resources to deal with other more complex aspects of customer services, but for me the real impact is on the public’s perceptions of our event. A well-organised and efficient ticketing experience puts audience members at ease and allows them to focus all their attention on enjoying this great festival. VIA stands out for me because it is able to deal with the high expectations of the sophisticated audience drawn to the world’s largest arts festival in a way that alternative systems just cannot manage and this is great for boosting the Fringe’s worldwide reputation as leaders in our field.