Member Article

De-mystifying mobile payments - On-Street Ticketing

Imagine the scenario. You’ve just checked into your hotel and you’re keen to start exploring the city you’ve booked for your weekend away. But you’ve got a problem. You’re faced with the dilemma of what to see first. It’s a common problem, we’ve all been there. Ordinarily you’ll grab your guide book and start circling the different places you want to visit - on that semi-useful map you were handed by the concierge, before setting out to see one of those “must-see” attractions you read about during the flight over. But, when you get there, you’re faced with a huge queue for tickets. You decide to wait and while a way a few hours inside before grabbing a spot of lunch, and heading to “must see” attraction number two, but when you get there, you’re faced yet again with another long wait. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find this entire process incredibly frustrating.

As consumers we may be more connected than ever before, thanks to the global high-speed communication network we now have in place, but at the same time we are also becoming increasingly time-poor, meaning the simple things are more important than ever. If we have a great experience, with perfect customer service, we will invariably want more. However, meeting our expectations can be rather problematic. Without the right infrastructure in place, travel companies, tour operators and leisure companies will be unable to deliver a level of service we expect and thus meet our high expectations.

As tourists, especially those of us with young families, we want to be served quickly. We certainly don’t want to have to queue for ages to get into our favourite attractions. Mobile technology is perhaps one of the most effective tools businesses can utilise to achieve this, but how do they identify the right solution?

When you consider that Smartphone penetration is to due to hit 75% later this year, it’s hard to ignore the impact mobile telephony has had on our lives. As consumers we are permanently connected. We can share our location wherever we are, seek out recommendations on Twitter, browse the web for areas of interest and capture those moments, all from the same device. But, mobile technology extends far beyond telephony technology.

In recent years, we’ve seen an explosion in the number of mobile payment solutions entering the market, from iZettle and mPowa to text payment solutions and NFC technology. Whilst this wealth of innovation is great for the industry, it does create a great degree of confusion. Each of these solutions has its own merits, with each fulfilling a specific requirement for both the consumer and the “seller”. However if you are new to mobile technology, investment in the wrong solution could prove to be as equally damaging and costly as not investing at all.

A successful mobile investment should not only meet your business needs and be tailored to the type of transactions you need to process, but easy to implement into your current infrastructure. Additionally, it must meet the needs of your customers, make their life easier and ultimately influence them to buy. In the case of our ticketing example, that’s shorter queue times and an ability to acquire multiple tickets to a number of different attractions at a variety of locations across the city.

So how can mobile technology help those of us frustrated by queuing for tickets to our favourite attractions?

If you’ve ever walked around central London, you can’t avoid seeing destination ticket booths selling tickets to West End shows, but if you’ve ever been near Baker Street you’ve probably seen people queuing round the block in a bid to meet the ‘stars’ at Madame Tussauds. It’s always perplexed me why both retail experiences are so different, because they don’t need to be. Imagine if you could buy all your tickets in one place, in one transaction and have them printed on the spot, just like you can when you board a City Sightseeing tour bus. The technology exists. So why are travel and leisure companies not investing in mobile technology?

Part of that reason, no doubt stems from the confusion around what technology is available, but at ECR we are seeing a growing demand for mobile payments and ticketing technology emerging. I predict, that with consumers’ making more decisions ‘on the fly’ we will see an increase in mobile on-the-spot ticket solutions this year. Adoption will undoubtedly take time, but no one solution should be introduced as a replacement for another. It’s all about enhancing and widening the different touch-points available to customers. If these companies can invest in mobile technology and software which can both process card payments and print tickets from the same device, either on- or offline, they will not only see their customer satisfactions levels rise, they’ll also increase their potential sales and profitability.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Pont .