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The Chesaning Showboat
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Showboat Vital Stats:
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Seating Capacity:
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6100 Reserved Seats
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Typical Season:
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6 Attractions
Annual festival 1 Week in July
25,000+ Tickets each season
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POS Needs:
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All Volunteer Staff
Merchant Table Rentals
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Background:
The Chesaning Showboat Festival is a week long event held annually the second full
week of July, in the town of Chesaning, Michigan. The Shiawassee Queen riverboat
has been bringing national acts to the Chesaning Amphitheatre since 1937. The amphitheatre
seats approximately 6100, and is sold in price tiered sections, as well as in discounted,
multi-event “packages”. In addition to the concerts and shows at the amphitheatre,
the surrounding park provides concession and beer tents, and is host to a variety
of vendor stands and local merchants offering items for retail sale.
Challenge:
The Chesaning Showboat Festival runs just one week of the year, with an all volunteer
staff. A cost effective, easy to use system was needed to make staff training manageable,
while providing the advanced POS sales and ticketing features required by the event.
Additionally, the compressed nature of the “season” results in a tremendous “spike”
in ticketing sales, so the system needed to be robust enough to handle temporary
surges in demand. Also required was a means to keep on-line sales fees well below
that of their previous ticketing provider, TicketMaster.
Solution:
The Chesaning Showboat committee turned to New Concepts Software, Inc. for a ticketing
and point of sale solution based on their popular Tick-It! Trak Pro technology.
Working closely with their volunteer staff and local IT service providers, NCS deployed
the Trak Pro system including the web based ticketing ASP pages on the Chesaning
Server. Since Trak Pro uses Microsoft SQL Server as the database back end, the Showboat
was assured of being able to handle the number of anticipated transactions. To “jump
start” the volunteers, NCS staff members pre-configured the POS and ticketing season
for the Showboat, so that training could focus on the day to day sales operations,
rather than tedious system administration.
Since the Showboat was now running their own web server selling tickets, as well
as running their own independent box office, “middleman” fees could be greatly reduced.
This meant that venue development fees and maintenance fees could be “rolled in”
to the price of the tickets, so that tickets purchased on-line would be the same
price as those purchased at the box office, and the cost to the customer would still
be lower than if the Showboat had continued with the TicketMaster service. A “win-win”
for everyone involved.
The Trak Pro system with the web based server application enabled remote management
and reporting, using virtually any web browser. This meant that the various committee
members could access the reports they needed right from their homes or offices,
whenever they needed them, not just when the committee was scheduled to meet.
The simplicity and visual nature of the ticketing sales function made training the
volunteer staff quick and easy. Unlike the text and command line based TicketMaster
system, Tick-It! Trak Pro employs a graphical user interface, from which seat assignments
are done from diagrams that accurately reflect the physical seating positions of
the venue.
The Trak Pro Inventory Module made it possible to configure merchant rental fees
for booth space, and to configure other sales items not possible with a “tickets
only” system.
Future possible improvements are wireless barcode ticket validation using PDA’s
and the Trak Pro Validation Module.
Customer Testimonial from the Chesaning Showboat Festival
The following is an un-edited customer testimonial from Angie Meder, box office
manager for the 2006 season, and current Ticket Committee member.
The Chesaning Showboat sails
during the second full week of July every summer. Volunteers work hard to bring
wonderful entertainment to town and people come from miles around to enjoy the small
town hospitality and see the show. You can find out more at our website:
www.chesaningshowboat.org .
We used the New Concepts Trak Pro ticketing software for the first time this year.
When we decided we needed computerized ticketing we went with Ticketmaster for two
years. Our staff consists of volunteers who are not very computer savvy and Ticketmaster’s
program was difficult for us to learn and complicated to use. The New Concepts program
is amazing. You only have to be able to read the screen to sell tickets. We were
all impressed with how easy it was to use. Our customers were also able to access
our website and buy tickets online easily. If a customer lost their tickets we could
replace them by checking the customer’s record and printing duplicates. At the end
of the day we printed reports for balancing and closing out. We were also able to
access and print sales reports that gave us details we needed just by going to any
computer with internet access. We were able to see what percentage of our customers
were buying online and what percentage were buying in person. We could track which
acts were selling better and adjust our advertising accordingly. We can also print
address labels to keep our customers informed about future events. This program
is a perfect fit for our venue.
Monty Boleyn and his staff went the extra mile helping us to set up and learn the
system. They never made us feel we were asking silly questions and always took the
time to make sure we understood their answers. When we had some special requests
for things we would like to see in our reports, Monty made adjustments to give us
what we needed.
We are so happy we found New Concepts and look forward to working with them for
many years to come.
Angie Meder
Chesaning Showboat
Ticket Committee
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