A new ticketing system introduced by Manawatū District Council for events held at its aquatic centre and library has been well received by the community, with attendance at its popular Dogs in Togs event increasing by 8%.
In April, the council made the shift to Jonas Leisure’s new Envibe Ticketing Module after experiencing complaints from customers about the previous system they had in place.
Manawatū District Council Community Services Manager Adie Johansen said the Ticketing Module, available as part of the Envibe leisure management system the council has used at Makino Aquatic Centre and Manawatū District Libraries has been a “lifesaver”.
“Essentially, everything my team need to do is able to be done through Envibe and its Ticketing module.”
She said the range of events the council offered at its community facilities included everything from Dogs in Togs swimming sessions for canines to murder mystery nights, paintvine nights and African drumming.
Each event had different requirements, and the council also ran some free events, in addition to paid ones, so they needed a modern ticketing solution that could cater for all with one annual fee – without charging a commission on every ticket sold.
She said the council had previously used a third-party ticketing system, but it kept crashing, was hard to access for customers and staff, and it couldn’t accept cash for point-of-sale transactions which many of Feilding’s customers preferred.
Johansen said her staff had came up with some work arounds, but they were far from ideal.
“I had my staff at breaking point, they were increasingly frustrated and were constantly on support calls with the [previous ticketing system’s] support team.”
Jonas Leisure expanded its Envibe leisure management software in March with the release of Ticketing Module so its clients no longer had to bring third-party software onboard to create, manage and sell tickets online or at point of sale events for events they manage.
The module can track attendance numbers, handle email and SMS (text) communications and does not charge a service fee per ticket as many third-party providers do. It can also handle redeeming and validation of tickets, as well as confirmation of purchase for customers.
“We were extremely happy when Envibe announced they were introducing the Ticketing Module,” Johansen said.
Staff had been losing up to half a day setting up events using their previous system, whereas Envibe’s new module allowed them to do it in as little as three minutes, Johansen said.
She said the Ticketing Module was a “click, click, done” one-stop shop solution and made running their range of events simple, complementing the rest of the functionality in Envibe’s leisure management software. Envibe was already used by the council to manage leisure centre and library bookings and programmes, group fitness and swimming classes, point of sale and reporting on facility use, so adding the event ticket sales functionality made sense.
“When Envibe’s ticketing solution came in, it just integrated seamlessly with the contact database, point of sale and everything else.
“The fact the Ticketing Module takes the customer’s name, number, and email address, even if they’re a guest, means we have a record for attendance and if they forget their ticket it’s a whole lot easier for us to manage.”
Johansen said the enhancement to the council’s leisure management software had already allowed it to run extra events.
“If it’s easy for customers to buy a ticket they will generally tell friends and family to come along to the event as well,” she said.
“With the new ticketing solution in place we ended up running a last-minute extra session of Dogs in Togs one weekend just because we had some extra time and it was really popular. We managed to sell half the spots in a day.”
Johansen said at the moment the library’s and aquatic centre’s events calendars were packed and her staff were looking forward to using the Ticketing Module to make it easy for the community to make the most of the wide variety of events the council had planned.
“We’ve built a pretty good reputation for the extra stuff we do, which is why our library is a community hub library, we’re trying to get away from the stigmatism of just being a quiet place where you go to get your books.”
Events hosted by the council range from murder mystery nights, attracting crowds of up to 80 people, through to wreath making workshops and the popular Dogs in Togs event.
