When your venue offers regular events or visits, you should consider offering annual or seasonal passes as part of your ticketing options. These passes offer many benefits to both the event organizer as well as the pass holders. As you solidify the event ticketing strategy for your organization, consider offering tiers of season passes to reap the rewards.

All types of venues can benefit from season passes, including but not limited to:

• Farms
• Ski resorts
• Parks
• Amusement parks
• Concert halls

With event management software, you can easily add season passes to your facility’s website for easy purchasing. If you’re considering adding season passes to your facility’s ticket offerings, read on to learn the basics of selling these types of tickets.

Table of Contents: 

What is a season pass?

What are the benefits of offering a season pass?

How can we encourage season pass sales?

What is a season pass?

While an annual pass allows guests year-round access to your venue, a season pass limits the ticket holders’ access to a predetermined time for the year. Usually, the season pass is limited to one holder who can enter the attraction freely without having to purchase a daily ticket.

For many facilities, it may not make sense to offer annual passes. Attractions such as a water park or pumpkin patch often operate during a few months of the year. Certain facilities may also want to limit pass access to specific times during the year, leading to the need for season passes.

Season passes offer loyal guests an opportunity to visit your location multiple times during a specific time during the year. They’re limited to the start and end date designated by your season.

A few examples of this would be:

• A water park offering a summer pass
• A farm offering a blueberry season pass
• Concerts or plays during a specific time of the year
• Mountain resorts offering passes for skiers

Attractions like farms may host events only during certain times of the year, making a season pass for guests more attractive. This also accommodates guests who may never intend to visit a farm during the heat of summer or harsh winter cold.

A season pass rather than an annual pass offers visitors even more specificity. They may not see themselves visiting year-round, but they may love visiting the pumpkin patch in fall or picking blueberries in the summer.

Event management software can help you set up season passes for your venue with ease. This way you can sell season passes online with your regular ticket offerings and merchandise.

What are the benefits of offering a season pass?

While season passes allow frequent visitors to save money on multiple visits, selling season passes also adds many benefits to your venue.

Season passes:

• Offer more upfront capital than a single-day ticket.
• Encourage attendance.
• Increase opportunities to strengthen relations with guests.
• Provide more chances to sell concessions or merchandise.

Season passes provide great peace of mind to your venues. Since the price is usually the cost of several single-day tickets, you can count on that revenue immediately.

Adding season passes to your ticket offerings also increases revenue for your facility in multiple ways.

Pass holders will usually buy concessions, merchandise, or gifts once in the venue. Also, since pass holders are not buying a ticket at the venue, they can feel as if they have gotten in for free, encouraging them to spend more money at your facility.

Season pass holders often want to bring friends along who will most likely need to purchase their own ticket.

Owning a season pass encourages these guests to visit your facility as frequently as they can, which provides extra opportunities for you to cash in on these opportunities.

Unfortunately, sometimes guests try to exploit the freedom of their season pass by sharing with friends and family members, allowing non-pass holders to attend for free. If this allowance is not explicitly outlined in your terms and conditions, offering a season pass can backfire as you lose revenue to visitors technically attending for free.

Event management software like SimpleTix requires season pass holders to upload a photo when they purchase their season passes. The photo can then be accessed from SimpleTix’s Event Organizer app, where you can verify that the season pass holder is the actual guest visiting. Since the photo can’t be changed without the pass holder notifying your facility, you can have peace of mind that the season pass is being respected.

Research shows that when guests buy memberships, it is because they want to support your institution. Season passes help you invest in the future of your institution. With each return visit, you have the opportunity to deepen the bonds with your guests and cultivate community at your facility.

How can we encourage season pass sales with event management software?

You should begin by using event management software that facilitates the sales of season passes. Your software should offer unlimited ticket types so that you can offer multiple tiers of passes with various prices, stipulations, and benefits. This will accommodate the diversity of your visitors’ wants and needs.

Exclusivity will encourage many regular visitors to research your season pass options. You can entice potential season pass holders with exclusive incentives, such as:

• Behind the scenes access
• Discounts on merchandise
• Early access to events or sales
• Limited edition member gifts
• Reserved seats
• Interactive activities
• Meet-and-greets
• Private tours

While potential guests will be interested in these perks, the biggest incentive will be the prospect of saving money. While season passes cost more upfront, they should provide a perceived discount for visitors the more they visit. With this in mind, carefully price your season tiers to account for this while also making sure your facility still makes a profit.

You can also offer discounted passes to senior citizens, educators, and military members, to name a few. Discounts on season passes throughout the year can also encourage purchases. Your facility could also partner with a local business or restaurant to give discounts to season pass holders, encouraging sales at both locations.

Managing the availability of these season passes will also help sell them. You could limit the number of passes or offer them only during certain times of the year. The scarcity of the tickets could encourage guests to buy passes while they can.

SimpleTix has offered an affordable, premium event ticketing platform that outperforms Eventbrite and similar apps for over 12 years. Compared to the competition, SimpleTix offers better options at a better price point. To learn more, call us at +1 (855) 550-3670 or email us here.