The era of paperless ticketing
Ticketing companies are eliminating the need to physically go to a ticket outlet these days, with technology driving us towards a paperless ticketing era.
Europe's leading online and mobile payments method, Ticketscript for the first time has introduced a unique way of selling tickets through Facebook. Event organizers can now use their Facebook page as a sales channel through the new quick and easy 'one click' integration of the Ticketscript ticketshop.
With standard integration of social plug-ins for advertising events, Ticketscript hopes the social ticketshop should lead to a boost in ticket sales, especially because the transaction takes place within Facebook.
Ticketscript says Facebook users who buy tickets for an event through the ticketshop can also automatically update their status with links to the Facebook ticketshop, helping the company reach out better.
Joep Lecluse, group marketing director at Ticketscript says "recommending an event through a friend or relation via social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, results in the strongest form of sales. We believe that Facebook is the sales channel of the future and it sits seamlessly alongside the various other Ticketscript sales and promotional channels."
While ticketing is getting social, a recent research report from Juniper has noted the increasing NFC (Near Field Communication) adoption in the airline ticketing industry. The day is not too far when you'll get to use your smartphone as an airline ticket, as mobile technology is having rapidly growing impact on the airline industry.
Within the next two years, Juniper Research predicts that one in every seven bar coded boarding passes worldwide will be delivered to passengers' mobile devices. This equates to 480 million mobile boarding passes which is treble the 160 million for last year.
According to report author Howard Wilcox: "Of the 30 airlines including several flag carriers that we found offering mobile boarding passes, about half also offer mobile ticket booking and purchasing. For the frequent flyer, we believe that using your mobile for booking, passing through security and boarding is a winning offer that will be augmented by adding loyalty, seat selection and flight information all in the single application."
Furthermore, Juniper's report on Mobile Ticketing for Transport Markets has found that there might be more NFC adoption across train travel and in suburban metro systems.
Interestingly, the report notes that more than one in ten subscribers will use mobile tickets for air, rail or metro travel worldwide by 2015. It also contains an elaborate five-year forecast for all the key market parameters including users, transactions and values for airline, rail and metro/bus ticketing.
Earlier, Juniper Research predicted that by 2015, one in every eight mobile phone users worldwide will either buy a ticket using their smartphone or have a ticket delivered on it.
