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Case Study

Elevating the customer experience of TicketOne users by adding Stay22 Map

Goals

  • Improve user experience for customers of their ticket booking website

Results

  • A much richer user experience
  • A small contribution to revenue
  • A collaborative partner committed to evolving the Stay22 MAP solution to add new aggregated services

Mapping a Better Journey

TicketOne’s Adoption of Stay22

TICKETING IN EUROPE

Among the key factors contributing to its success, Eventim Italy (know locally as TicketOne) has an extensive network of partnerships with event organizers and venues, for whom it can guarantee a fast sellout. It collaborates with major entertainment industry players to offer tickets for highly anticipated events, ensuring a comprehensive selection for customers. Its extensive coverage has helped TicketOne establish a strong market presence and a wide customer base. The platform also provides additional features such as ticket delivery, event information and customer support.


Since 2007, TicketOne has become part of a European circuit led by the German company CTS Eventim (listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange) with the perspective of both further expanding its foreign customer base and promoting the Italian events sold abroad. Furthermore, the CTS Group brings a strong technological and commercial boost, thanks to the continuous improvement of their IT systems and to the launch of innovative services for both promoters and final consumers.


Over a long phase of integration, TicketOne has adopted CTS Eventim’s technology except for some elements of localization that are preserved to comply with unique Italian legislative and tax requirements. Now that TicketOne sales have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, it’s listing up to 20,000 events per year, achieving each month an average of over 7 million online users on the website.

  • ABOUT TICKETONE

  • Established in 1998, TicketOne is the first Italian company providing ticketing, marketing, information and e-commerce services for music, entertainment, sport and culture events.


    TicketOne is a leader in Italy in its own industry with several millions of tickets sold through its multi-channel platform via website, mobile app and over 1,000 affiliated retail points of sale. TicketOne operates primarily in Italy and has just celebrated 25 years in business.

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Being the best matters to TicketOne. The company has continuously invested in technological advancements, providing a user-friendly and efficient platform for ticket sales. This has allowed TicketOne to stay ahead of competitors and offer a seamless ticketing experience. TicketOne also places a strong emphasis on customer satisfaction. It offers reliable customer support services, ensuring that any issues or inquiries are promptly addressed, enhancing the overall user experience.

As of 2019, however, the user experience beyond ticket purchase was limited. As Giorgio Aretino, Online Marketing & eCommerce Director at TicketOne, explains, for one thing, he wanted to include a facility that would enable ticket buyers to seamlessly book accommodation near their event venue.

To that end he worked on several solutions but the best he could find consisted of joining the affiliation programme of a major online travel agency (OTA). This provided a static integration on the confirmation page but not one that was linked in any way to the actual ticket(s) being purchased. Giorgio felt this added very little value for his site users. “It’s not about revenue,” he emphasizes, “it was about giving customer service in order to fulfill their needs and give them a proper customer journey.”

“It’s not about revenue,” he emphasizes, “it was about giving customer service in order to fulfill their needs and give them a proper customer journey.”

Gigrgio
Giorgio Aretino
Online Marketing & eCommerce Director at TicketOne

Enter STAY22

Giorgio was then approached by Stay22. The immediate attraction of its MAP application [see box] is that it provides a dynamic and aggregated response, which is a step change improvement on what Giorgio was able to offer before.

As soon as site users start looking at a specific event, they see a venue-centric map with nearby available accommodation options. They’re presented with the accommodation’s name and type, the route to the venue, the distance and walking time to the venue, the number of rooms left, the star rating and review scores, and comparative rates for one night across a range of participating OTAs.

Behind the scenes, MAP has conducted a metasearch of 35+ million bookable listings from a range of OTAs against the specific date and location of each event. Instantaneously, Giorgio’s customers, at several touchpoints along their ticket buying journey, can see contextualized accommodation choices that inform them about their options and make booking convenient accommodation very simple.

  • What is Stay22 MAP? 

  • Stay22 MAP is an industry-leading dynamic map solution. Free to use and easy to integrate, it’s basically an embeddable iframe – short for “inline frame” – which creates a window within a window on your web page.

    The MAP functionality searches 35m+ bookable listings from all the major online travel agencies (Booking.com, Expedia etc.) in 220+ countries. It then displays nearby available accommodation options, based on event date, on a customized, interactive, venue-centric map. The map can appear nearly anywhere, including on event information, confirmation and thank you pages, in push notifications, confirmation and reminder emails, newsletters, social media posts and in mobile apps.

    Site users get added value from the information MAP provides. Plus, every time accommodation is booked via a map on your site, you earn commission. MAP also provides a dashboard that lets you track bookings and leverage data to get a better understanding of event-goers’ behavior. Stay22 also provides human (not bot!) support from integration to optimization.

Try out the Stay22 MAP 👇

an aggregated response

Giorgio was immediately grabbed by the significant value add of Stay22 MAP. What was particularly persuasive for him is the way that MAP aggregates from a vast array of accommodation options, giving site users the widest possible breadth of options. Convinced that the technology was robust, he became a MAP champion and successfully lobbied Eventim head office to adopt it across the whole group.

Thereafter, the MAP adoption onto Eventim’s centralized system was handled by Eventim and Stay22 experts. It was a complex process, involving the configuration of MAP for the look and feel of all unique ticketing sites in multiple languages.

He notes: “Since the beginning of the relationship with Stay22, I’ve considered MAP important, not only for us at TicketOne but also for other countries of the CTS Eventim Group. I’ve pushed it a lot in order to adopt the solution and optimize the implementation to include a lot of contact points.” Once the centralized implementation was completed, TicketOne was able to activate MAP on its site very easily and successfully

"Since the beginning of the relationship with Stay22, I’ve considered MAP important, not only for us at TicketOne but also for other countries of the CTS Eventim Group"

Gigrgio
Giorgio Aretino
Online Marketing & eCommerce Director at TicketOne

5 Reasons to work with stay22

  1. More accessible people: One advantage of working with Stay22 is that there are no customer service bots. You’ll get support with Map implementation and optimization from friendly, knowledgeable humans.

  2. The revenue opportunity: Whenever accommodation is booked via MAP on your site, you get commission, opening a new revenue stream. Plus, we’ve found that the propensity to book accommodation is much higher when site users are offered a comprehensive range of accommodation options in one screen, allowing users to make better travel decisions faster than ever.

  3. The dashboard: MAP provides a dashboard that consolidates all the link activity across all the OTAs together into one screen so site owners can glean insights with which to optimize their site based on user behavior.

  4. Impact on SEO: Stay22 MAP doesn’t involve any heavy scripts or coding, so has no adverse import on your site’s SEO – while simultaneously adding considerable value for users.

  5. Stay22 keeps evolving and is dedicated to delivering for event companies: Giorgio envisions that future iterations of MAP can add yet more value by including other ancillary services such as transport options (flight and train tickets), local restaurants and parking options.

outcomes

As it goes, MAP went live on TicketOne’s site in May 2020 – just as the global COVID-19 pandemic was tightening its stranglehold on the events sector. It was two years before live in-person events restarted in Italy, so the immediate impact of MAP is impossible to gauge.

Notwithstanding, now that the site is operating at pre-pandemic levels, Giorgio notes: “The difference is absolutely related to the quality of the content. MAP is well designed and responsive. This solution is absolutely a step forward for us compared with the previous static implementation that was not present on every page and not related to the specific event. And it’s going to be a richer experience for our customers going forward when additional services are added.”

Giorgio can see that revenue from accommodation commission has increased “absolutely” – but frankly it’s a small drop in the ocean in relation to total revenue. What does matter is that TicketOne continues to demonstrate its dedication to the user experience, differentiating from and outperforming its competition. MAP is making a significant contribution to ensuring that TicketOne maintains its market leading edge.

“This solution is absolutely a step forward for us compared with the previous static implementation.”

Gigrgio
Giorgio Aretino
Online Marketing & eCommerce Director at TicketOne

About Stay22

Stay22.com is a Canadian travel tech company that offers affiliate revenue generation opportunities for events, ticketing, and travel media publications to monetize the travel intent of their audience. After six years, Stay22 is working with more than 2,800 global partners; and will have paid out more than $25m USD in commission payments to partners by the end of 2024.

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