Advance Ticket Reservations for members are a helpful tool to help your audience plan their viewing experience and guarantee their entry into all of their favourite events, but for some membership types, you may choose to disable this requirement and allow for walk-up admission using instant tickets. Instant tickets can be issued by the scanner to all membership types, regardless of whether or not they are enabled for advance reservations.
The requirement for Advance reservation for members can be configured in three places, in the Event Bucket Settings, Physical Event Settings and in the Membership Bucket General Settings.
Configuring Advance Reservations for the Event Bucket (Instant Tickets)
To set the default requirement for Advance Reservations for members, open your Event Bucket Settings and click “Open Additional Settings”.
Under the heading “Pass Settings”, you’ll find a setting for “By default, require passholders to reserve tickets (overridable on a per ticket bucket or per-event basis)”. Though this setting specifies passes and passholders, it applies equally to memberships. By leaving this setting checked, by default all of your members will be able to use their membership to reserve tickets (either online or via the box office) in order to guarantee their admission to your events.
If you uncheck “By default, require passholders to reserve tickets (overridable on a per ticket bucket or per-event basis)”, your members will not need to redeem their memberships online for any tickets and they will be granted walk-up admission to your events with instant tickets if capacity is available. If you uncheck this setting, it is a really great idea to add custom text to your membership order confirmation emails about your admission practices and policies.
Configuring Advance Reservations for Physical Events
If you would like your advance reservation requirement for a specific Physical Event to be different from the default advance reservation requirement that has been set for the Event Bucket;
Click Edit on the physical event and look for the “Passholder tickets” setting which is located about half way down the page. Once again, though this setting specifies passes and passholders, it applies equally to memberships.
Uncheck “Use default event bucket setting”
Select one of the following; “Require passholder ticket reservation in advance (“RSVP”) or “Do not require advance reservation; allow passholder walk-ups”.
Configuring Advance Reservations for the membership Bucket
If you would like your advance reservation requirement for a specific membership Bucket to be different from the default advance reservation requirement that has been set for the Event Bucket;
Click Edit on the membership bucket and look for “Advance reservations” in the "General" settings tab.
Uncheck “Use default event bucket setting”
Select one of the following; “Require member ticket reservation in advance (“RSVP required”; overridable on a per event basis)” or “Do not require advance reservation; allow member walk-ups”.
Setting Hierarchy
The setting on the event bucket will become the default setting for all physical events and all membership buckets.
The physical event setting overrides the event bucket setting, but not the membership bucket setting.
The membership bucket setting overrides both the event bucket setting and the physical event setting.
Example Use Cases using the Setting Hierarchy
Festival Requires membership reservations for all physical events, but has pop-up events for which standalone tickets are being sold, but member registration is not required.
Event Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation Required.
Event Setting: Advance Reservation is not Required.
Members have walk-up access to all physical events except for one super exclusive screening that will require members to reserve a ticket.
Event Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation is not Required.
Event Setting: Advance Reservation is Required.
Members have walk-up access to all physical events except for one super exclusive physical event that will require members to reserve a ticket. High level members are exempt from the requirement to reserve tickets to the super exclusive physical event.
Event Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation is not Required.
Event Setting: Advance Reservation is Required.
Membership Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation is not required for High level memberships. All other memberships are set to use the default event bucket setting.
Most Memberships require reservations for all physical events, except for the Highest level of membership.
Event Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation Required.
Event Setting: Use Default Event Bucket Setting.
Membership Bucket Setting: Advance Reservation is not required for the Highest level of membership.
Instant Tickets
Instant Tickets give members the option to either reserve tickets online in advance or allow them to walk up to the door and get scanned in with no reservation required.
Instant Tickets are automatically generated when scanning memberships with the Eventive Scanner in the following situations:
When the requirement for Advance Reservations is disabled on the Event Bucket, Physical Event or the membership Bucket. This allows you to selectively use Instant Tickets on a per-event basis.
The membership applies to the event, via a membership rule.
The membership has not already been used to order a ticket to the event. If the membership has already reserved a ticket, scanning this membership will mark the existing ticket as scanned, not create a new one.
There is available capacity in the ticket bucket. If the ticket bucket is sold out, and there is space available in the venue, use RUSH LINE mode to scan memberships for automatic oversell.
The Importance of Tickets
Tickets serve a few important functions, but most importantly they are statistically Important to your festival. member tickets are tracked in the Membership Ticket Analytics and Membership Sales Analytics reports. Depending on how you’ve designed your memberships and created your membership buckets, the analytics in this report can give you important insights into membership use patterns and user behaviors. Knowing key indicators of how your customers use their memberships, such as average uses per membership type and attendance to each event by membership type, can help you determine if the membership related perks that you’ve created are over or underutilized and can help you create value that is targeted to the users of each membership type.
Handling Ticket Allocations
Whether your cinema requires Advance Reservations or provides Walk-up Admission for members using Instant Tickets, to guarantee a specific number of tickets are allocated for members only, you might consider creating one or more Membership Restricted Ticket Buckets. You can restrict a ticket bucket for membership using the “Restrict ordering to certain pass buckets only setting”