The Stage

Edinburgh’s festivals to launch joint ticketing system

Published Friday 17 April 2009 at 13:11 by Thom Dibdin

An Edinburgh-wide ticketing portal encompassing 12 of the city’s key festivals, including the Festival Fringe, is to be launched as part of the first ever unified Edinburgh festivals marketing strategy.

Created by the strategic collaborative body, Festivals Edinburgh, the plan aims to simplify the experience of visiting the festivals for the visitor, increasing ticket sales, and increasing attendance at the festivals through an international marketing campaign.

Martin Reynolds, head of marketing for Festivals Edinburgh told The Stage that the body is at last able to implement ideas that individual festivals have been talking about for years.

He said: “It’s about more promotions in new markets, selling the festivals as one entity, making the whole process of navigating the festivals much simpler in terms choosing what you are going to see and finding information. A lot of it is about projects initiatives and strategies the festivals have been talking about for a long time.”

Reynolds said that the latest step in the long-term goal of providing a one-stop online ticketing portal to all the festivals has been achieved in the procurement of a piece of ‘middle-ware’ that can help to link each festival’s booking engines.

He said: “It is a piece of software that compiles listings and booking data. It is used to great effect in the West End of London and also on Broadway. So it has been tested and is a great solution for Edinburgh. How it will work is that, Expedia style, [the on-line travel and holiday website] you will be able to see all the listings across all the festivals. For the first time you will be able to put a Fringe and a Book Festival ticket into your shopping basket and buy them at the same time.”

Following the ticketing debacle of last year’s Fringe, Reynolds was keen to emphasise that the new portal will be brought in gradually, with a beta version online for one of the smaller festivals early next year, with the full implementation expected to go live in time for the fringe in 2010.

“For performers, it will be a comfort that the festivals are being more effectively and more widely promoted,” said Reynolds, adding that besides the traditional routes of employing communications company Burt Greener to promote the festivals to specialist media outside Edinburgh and the Lothians and working with tourism agencies, the strategy is aiming to give Festivals Edinburgh a strong online presence.

A new dedicated online television platform, edinburghfestivals.tv will be in place in time for this year’s fringe, carrying existing film footage and specially commissioned works.

Meanwhile, Reynolds denied that the overall strategy will be of disproportionate benefit to the big players on the fringe.

“We know from research that part of the magic of the fringe is bumping into shows that you would not normally see,” he said. “So I think to sell the full experience we couldn’t not focus on the full range of it, because we know that’s what appeals to people, that discovery and bumping into shows they would not normally see.”

He added that “one idea we are working on is a mobile phone-enabled location-based service. On your mobile you could go ‘I am standing in Stockbridge - for example - I am free for the next couple of hours, what can I go and see?’. Previously you would have to trawl through the Fringe programme with a venue map to come up with that.”

The 12 members of Festivals Edinburgh are: Edinburgh International Science Festival, Bank of Scotland Imaginate Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh Mela Festival, Scottish International Storytelling Festival and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay.