How to sell attraction tickets online

Selling attraction tickets online is not only about taking payment before the visit. For a museum, farm, gallery, escape room or adventure park, the point is to shape how people arrive, keep the site within safe and comfortable limits, and give your team a calm, predictable day even when demand spikes. This guide walks through the set-up step by step, in the order you would actually do it, so that by the time a busy Saturday arrives your entrance runs as a managed flow rather than a scramble at the door.

Step 1: Build your entry model before you build the page

Start with how guests physically move through your site, because that decides everything else. Attractions fall into a few broad patterns, and Experiqo supports each as a product type. The right choice depends on whether your capacity is defined by time, by a fixed session, or simply by daily headcount.

• Free-sale admission suits sites where guests can arrive at any point during opening hours and roam freely — a farm park, a gallery, a garden. You sell against a daily or opening-hours limit rather than a specific arrival time.
• Timed-entry slots suit sites where you need to control the rate of arrivals — a museum with a popular exhibition, an attraction with a narrow entrance, or anywhere queues build if everyone turns up at once. Guests choose a slot and enter within it.
• Fixed sessions suit experiences run in rounds — an escape room, a planetarium show, a guided cavern walk — where a set number of people start together at a set time.

Write down, for each entry point or experience, the maximum number of people it can comfortably and safely hold at once. That single figure is the foundation for the capacity you will configure next.

Step 2: Set up timed-entry slots and per-slot capacity

Timed entry is the most useful single lever an attraction has. Instead of one crowd at opening time, you offer a series of arrival windows and cap how many people can enter each one. That spreads footfall across the day, keeps the site within its comfortable limit, and lets you sell quiet mid-afternoon periods as readily as the morning rush.

1. Decide your slot length. Fifteen- or thirty-minute windows work for most attractions. Shorter windows give finer control at the gate; longer windows are easier for guests to plan around. Match the window to how quickly your entrance can process arrivals.
2. Generate slots from your opening pattern. Build them across your full opening hours so every part of the day is bookable, then keep the last slot early enough that guests still get a full visit before closing.
3. Set a capacity on every slot. This is the number that stops timed entry becoming overcrowding. Base it on the entrance throughput and the staff on duty, not just the size of the site. If two till points can each admit roughly forty guests in fifteen minutes, an eighty-cap slot is realistic; a two-hundred cap is not.
4. Vary caps where it makes sense. Peak weekends might warrant tighter caps to protect the experience, while a wet Tuesday can take a larger window. Adjust per slot rather than applying one blanket figure.

Once caps are in place, capacity is enforced automatically. Every sale — from your website, your on-site till, or a connected channel — counts against one live figure for that slot. When a slot fills, it shows as sold out and stops taking bookings, so you never oversell a window and end up with a queue you cannot admit.

Step 3: Define your ticket and price types

Guests expect to see the right price for who they are, so set your price types up clearly. In Experiqo you can define adult, child, concession, and combined family or group rates against each product, all in GBP and all shown plainly before payment.

• Keep the age bands unambiguous. State the ages that count as child and concession so nobody arrives expecting a discount they do not qualify for. This saves awkward conversations at the gate.
• Use a family ticket as an anchor. A single family price often converts better than four separate lines and nudges the average order value up.
• Show the running total. As guests select quantities, the total updates on screen before they pay, so there are no surprises at checkout.

Because Experiqo uses flat pricing and takes no commission on your direct bookings, the price a guest pays is the price you keep. There is no per-ticket cut eroding a school-holiday rush, which matters when your margins live in the volume.

Step 4: Add fast-track, add-ons and extras

Once the core admission is set, layer in the options that lift revenue and manage flow at the same time.

• Fast-track admission is a priced ticket type or a small set of premium slots that let guests skip the main queue. It earns more per head and takes pressure off your standard entrance at the busiest windows.
• Add-ons and extras attach optional items to a booking — a guidebook, animal feed at a farm, a parking add-on, a hot drink on arrival, entry to a special exhibition. Guests choose them during checkout, so the sale is captured before they arrive rather than negotiated on the day.
• Bundles combine admission with an extra into a single ticket, giving guests a fuller day out and lifting the average sale without extra work at the till.

Each of these is configured against the product, so a guest booking a two o'clock slot sees exactly the extras relevant to that visit.

Step 5: Embed ticket sales on your own website

Put the checkout where guests already are. Experiqo's embeddable widget drops into your existing site with a single snippet, so people buy tickets inline, in your own branding, without being bounced to a third-party page. Keeping sales on your own domain protects the guest relationship and keeps those bookings commission-free.

1. Place the widget on the pages guests land on — the homepage, the "plan your visit" page, and any exhibition or event page — rather than burying it one click too deep.
2. Design for the phone. A large share of attraction tickets are bought on mobiles, often in the car park minutes before entry. A short, mobile-first checkout with clear slot selection is essential.
3. Show slot availability honestly. Let guests see which windows are filling and which are open, so they self-select into quieter times and your peaks stay within their caps.

If you want to see how the widget and the entry models fit your particular site, the platform overview walks through the pieces, and a demo can show them against your own opening pattern.

Step 6: Scan guests in with QR tickets on the door

Every booking issues a QR ticket to the guest's phone. On arrival, your team scans it rather than hunting for a name on a list, and that difference is what keeps a busy entrance moving.

• Scanning is quick and validates the ticket. Each ticket is checked as valid and marked used, so it cannot be scanned twice or passed on to someone else once inside.
• It enforces the slot. The scan checks the ticket against its booked window, so guests arriving well before their slot, or on the wrong day, are flagged at the point of entry and your team can decide how to handle it.
• No special hardware. A phone camera is enough. Station one scanning device per entry lane and you can open extra lanes on peak days simply by adding a team member with a phone.

Step 7: Add gift vouchers and gather reviews

Attractions make natural gifts, so offer gift vouchers that people can buy for others and redeem against a future visit. They bring revenue in year-round, smooth out quiet trading periods, and introduce first-time visitors who arrive already paid up. After the visit, collect reviews to build the social proof that persuades the next guest to book — the trust that turns a browsing visitor into a paying one.

Step 8: Run the busy day from real numbers

The quiet advantage of advance sales is that you can see the day before it happens. Because bookings are attached to slots, you know how full each window will be while there is still time to act on it.

• Roster to the shape of the day. Put more team on the entrance and the busy exhibits during peak slots, and pull back when the afternoon eases, instead of staffing a flat guess.
• Open and close capacity in response to demand. If a slot is selling out fast and your site can take it, lift the cap; if the weather turns, tighten later windows.
• Read the reporting. Sales by day, slot, and ticket type reveal which windows to promote, where concession and family mix is highest, and how pricing might flex by season or school holiday.
• Keep guests informed. Automatic confirmations deliver tickets and arrival details straight away, and reminders before the visit cut no-shows and reduce the questions your team fields on the door.

Busy-day checklist

1. Choose the right entry model — free-sale, timed slots, or fixed sessions.
2. Generate timed-entry slots and set a realistic capacity on each.
3. Define adult, child, concession, and family price types clearly.
4. Add fast-track, add-ons, and bundles to lift the average sale.
5. Embed the widget on your own site for commission-free, mobile-first sales.
6. Issue QR tickets and scan guests in lane by lane.
7. Offer gift vouchers and collect reviews.
8. Use advance numbers to roster, adjust caps, and brief the team.

Set up in this order and a peak day stops being something to survive. Timed entry, live capacity control, and fast QR check-in are the operational backbone; ticket and price types, fast-track, add-ons, gift vouchers, and clear reporting are what turn ticketing into steady growth. To see how it maps to your kind of site, the industries pages cover attractions and venues in more detail.