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Box Office Ticketing and
Point of Sale Systems
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Paramount Theatre
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The Paramount Theatre Vital Stats:
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Seating Capacity:
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850 Reserved Seats
No General Admission Seats
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Typical Season:
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50 Attractions
September through June
40,000+ Tickets Annually
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Special POS Needs:
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Multiple Membership Discounts,
Print at Home Tickets and
Remote System Management
For Part Time Box Office
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Background:
Opened in 1914, The Playhouse Theatre of Rutland was considered by many to be one
of the finest theaters in New England through the early part of the 20th century.
Today, in the 21st century, The Paramount as it has been known since the early 1930’s
has been completely restored as the “Jewel of Downtown Rutland.”
The Paramount season runs from September through June. There are three distinct
programming tracks to the season. The first is The Playhouse Series. This series
is an eclectic mix of programming which includes comedy, dance, music, and weekend
children’s shows. The second is The Broadway Series which consists of touring musicals,
dramas, and comedies from Broadway. The third series is called “Education is Paramount”
which brings the local school curriculum to the stage.
Challenge:
The Box Office for the Paramount Theatre is open and staffed only 3 days a week.
A system enabling “full time sales” capacity with a “part time box office” had to
be implemented. Central to this requirement was the ability for sales to take place
on the Internet 24 / 7, with verifiable print at home tickets generated by the customers
themselves, along with the ability of Paramount staff to manage, update and control
box office operations remotely when the office was closed. Additionally, Paramount
needed a system that could handle multiple types of membership discounts, each of
which were sold at different price levels. The ability to accept donations, both
in the Box Office and on-line, as well as handle other merchandise and fees was
also desired.
Solution:
The Paramount Theatre chose to implement Tick-It! Trak Pro from New Concepts Software,
Inc, complete with the internally hosted web based sales module. By hosting their
own Trak Pro web ticketing site on their server, The Paramount Theatre gained complete
control of ticketing and other POS operations both “in house” as well as “on line”.
Donors could act upon their generous impulses while buying tickets by adding donations
to their on-line shopping carts. The box office hours were effectively extended
to 24/7 leveraging the 3 days a week that the theatre office was manned. Since launching
the on-line ticketing, the Paramount has maintained an average of 30% ticket sales
by dollar volume on the web, trending towards higher percentages more recently.
Needless to say, this represents a serious slice of ticketing operations, all done
with less staff and materials as it is all “self service” and “print at home”.
All website visitors to the Paramount ticketing portal must “register”, so even
if they do not purchase anything during their initial visit, they are already entered
in the Paramount’s database, ready for subsequent transactions, and available for
marketing campaigns, all without any work done by the staff.
Using the ability to define membership “levels” in Trak Pro, specific discount benefits
could be assigned to memberships ranging in price from free to $2000. Once defined
as a member of a Paramount “Circle”, discounts are automatically applied at the
box office POS stations for qualifying purchases made by that customer. No further
action is required by the operator, other than to identify the customer during the
transaction. Everything else is handled by the Trak Pro POS System.
Sample "Print at Home" Ticket:
Here is an example of Paramount Theatre’s “Print at Home” ticket. It prints from
the customer’s computer at home as an exact sized, 2 inch by 5½ inch ticket, with
the same “stock” as a thermal ticket produced at the Box Office! The bar code enables
ushers at the Paramount to determine the validity of the ticket upon presentation
for entry.
Other Case Studies
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