I am looking for information regarding online/computer programs tourist railroads/museums use for online ticketing i.e. Ticketmaster or TicketsWest. Any advice on certain types? How much will one have to pay for such a service? Any information on this subject is appreciated.

Thanks,

Aaron Schwarz
Chehalis-Centralia Railroad Museum

We have a custom ticketing program at the Steam Railroading Institute.
It is pretty basic, but at the same time, quite powerful on the admin side of things. It will spit out reports, and send out e-mail reminders to people a couple weeks before their trip.


It was actually pretty cheap to have written, and while it does not look pretty right now, it is easily customizable with some basic HTML knowledge.

What is really nice about it, is that it is pretty much maintnence free, which is MUCH nicer than doing ticket sales the old way by hand.

You can check it out at www.mstrp.com , and click on 'puchase North Pole Express tickets'

I would avoid those two that you mentioned, they are pretty expensive. HuckleBerry's is interesting, but it is a custom job.

As far as 'off the shelf' goes, here at the Monticello Railway Museum (along with several others) we are using Dynamic Ticket Solutions (http://dynamicticketsolutions.com/). $500 to set up and 10% is added as a handling fee to the passengers. They are also very easy to work with to get a customized solution and turn around time is pretty quick. We also went with authorize.net for an online payment gateway, so we don't have to punch in credit cards anymore.

> We have a custom ticketing program at the Steam Railroading Institute.

The one area I've found that chokes most ticketing programs is the ability to keep track of the number of seats available. Trying to get a program to understand that it has 100 seats it can sell is easy, but when you get to the point of telling it those seats can be adult, childs or seniors, it gets tricky. Any (tourist railway affordable) off the shelf solution I've seen bogs down there, not being able to create a "pool" of seats that any of the ticket types can pull from, while still keeping overall count correct.

I'd be very interested in any programs anyone has found that will avoid that problem.

(However, I'm not interested in Ticketmaster and their customer extortion fees, even if they can do it...)

If know of something, or have written something you are willing to sell, that will work for this application, please tell me about it!

Bob, several solutions on this thread:

http://rypn.sunserver.com/forum/viewtop ... servations

I've never seen any ticketing system with the limitation you describe. I could see how a system using a "product inventory" model, and loaded with "100 seats of inventory" for each trip, could have that problem. (Microsoft's RMS, for example.) Since a seat could have several different prices, depending on the age of the butt that sits in it, creating (for example) an "inventory" of 50 adult, 25 children, and 25 Senior seats for your 1pm departure will hurt you if 80 adults, 5 children, and 15 Seniors show up.

But any true "ticketing" system won't have a problem.

I'd be happy to discuss your needs - drop me a note.

http://traveltracker2006.com

JAC

That's because I've never been able to afford any of the online ticketing systems I've seen offered. The prices most of them want are simply out of reach for our organization.

To solve the problem of not having $10K to spend on a ticketing program, I've been trying to make the more common and much more affordable online e-commerce applications work, which as you suggest are product based.

Several years ago, we had an online ticketing system written for the Friends of the 261 that allowed you to define cars, consists and trips, and sell tickets, with an Authorize.net interface for payment.

Unfortunately, the implementers chose to write the entire system in a markup language called IHTML which we DO NOT support any longer due to a variety of problems.

What we are doing, is rewriting this software from the ground up as a web based Java/Cold Fusion application. When complete, we will offer it as a hosted service for people who run excursions/tourist trains etc. There will be a small monthly fee for the use of the software (it is a hosted application) and it is being designed so that you can integrate it into your website with an IFRAME construct.

In any case, in a day or so, a site will be live at www.steamtickets.com (I know, it shoulda been a more generic name, but who knew?). We are still very much open to input as to what the system should contain, and will describe the features, as currently designed, on the new site.

Hope this helps. We don't really expect to make any money off this service, and aren't predatory enough to charge what it would take, so the programmers' time is being absorbed by the company. Hopefully, we'll produce something here that will appeal.

Regards,
Doug

I didn't realize that John Craft had a good start on just such a project when I posted the above. I may not continue the project if John's project is well along.

Doug,

what I've put together is not an online application - it was designed for a call-center-style environment. Don't hold back on my account.


JAC

That sounds like a very useful system.

As John mentioned, his program is not set up for online, and that's really what we're looking for. I'm guessing there are plenty of other railroads out there in the same boat (train?) who could use a reasonably priced online reservation system.

As for costs, I understand what you mean about the expense. Hopefully it would be something that you could spread the cost out among enough customers to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, most tourist railroad simply don't have to the budget to pay what this stuff is worth. (Please note I'm not saying it's over-priced, rather that many are under-budgeted...)

We'll proceed then. My CF guys have about 300 hours into the project and say that it is well along. Will keep you posted. (We're planning on offering it at $24.00/month) (I was supposed to say $24.95 but I hate that.)

Doug

Bob,

maybe I'm hung up on semantics, and Doug's probably going to call me and chew me out now ;) , but I'll say this anyway.

Practically every tourist railroad operating today has online ticket sales, but only 2 or 3 have an "online reservations system." Most outfits that have a reservations system, do not have it online.

The ability to sell tickets online does not require an "online reservations system." In fact, most tourist lines don't need a reservations system at all.

A reservations system (whether it's online or depot-based) makes sense where you are trying to fill every seat of a complex schedule, or where you issue tickets with seat assignments. It may be a good investment if you have a large number of ticket agents, and you want to streamline your paperwork and handle your reservations with fewer paid employees.

But if you carry 20-30k riders per year on a sit-anywhere, out-and-back ride with basically the same consist each trip, you probably don't need the additional overhead of a reservations system.

If you do in fact need a reservations system, online may not be the way to go. System architecture depends on your needs, your priorities, and your budget. And don't even think about it unless you can get good, stable broadband Internet to your ticket office(s). Because if you are truly using a "reservations system," your ticket agents will have to use it to input your telephone orders, and your walkup sales.

If your goal is merely online ticket sales, that can be accomplished by using some variant of FormMail (a free script which would send an email to your ticket office with the appropriate details). The average 13-year-old today could implement that in just a few minutes. That's how most outfits (including some of the biggest) do it today.

JAC

That's not being hung up on semantics at all, it's making an important distinction, and is a very valid point. You're right, we could probably sell tickets on our day to day trains and never worry about over-booking. We have a capacity of about 250 and usually haul 150...



Unfortunately we do, at least for the events that are most worthwhile for selling advance tickets. i.e. Railfan trips, BBQ trains, Halloween, Christmas and Easter, that sort of special event. Those routinely DO sell out, and thus need some sort of system to say "Hey, stop selling tickets or start ordering more coaches, whichever you prefer...."



Those are very important considerations...



We did that in the past. Our previous manager had worked at another railroad, and she said to me "I want a secure online reservation form" and I stuttered and hemmed and hawed and mumbled about cost and site certifcates and seat counts and oh boy is that going to be hard and...

She replied "Well, we did it over at such and such, so why can't we do it here? I replied "OK, so tell me exactly what they did and how they did it..." After some research she told me "We have this form that e-mailed the ticket office and then they'd call folks" to which I responded "OK, well that's not exactly what I understood you to mean when you mentioned "secure online ordering" but OK, I can do that...

I did it exactly as you suggest, using formmail. A couple of problems emerged. We had to call folks and confirm and get the CC number. I explained we really didn't want those floating around in e-mail, and there was no real way to guarantee security in e-mail, at least none regular folks would do (Step 1, install PGP... Step 2 send us your public key... yeah, sure, that's gonna work... :) )

Of course even though it said we'd call and confirm before the reservation was final, we often had a few folks who showed up for sold out trips saying "but I filled out your form and requested this date" "Uh, when did you do that ma'am?" "Last night, about 11:00 PM" Fortunately we left a few spare seats.

Even when they requested tickets ahead of time, the hassle of calling back and getting the credit card info is exactly what we're trying to avoid. This system is supposed to make life easier.

So we're definitely looking for something that checks for availability, at least on the trains where it's a concern and then takes the CC info right there on the spot.