Consider going to a concert without the hassles of booking the ticket or standing in a long queue. Yes! it is time for us to move ahead of the hassles of having to bargain with touts or hassles of physical pick-up or queuing for a ticket. Now, mobile tickets enables customers to have a paperless ticket delivered directly to their mobile devices thus, saving you from the pain of both a booking and delivery fee.
Mobile ticketing is also the best way to get rid of touts. According to Nokia UK’s head of marketing Simon Lloyd m-tickets could eventually kill off the hated ticket touts who hang around outside shows. "It’s removing the element of ticket touts," he says. "It’s a secure environment, so you can’t pass these tickets on and can’t hack in. Paper tickets are always open to abuse."
The technology offers unique barcodes to mobile handsets, providing a secure ticketing solutions. The tickets are sent using SMS or MMS to deliver unique bar-code tickets to the mobile phone of the purchaser.
Surely, there are chances that the tickets sent through SMS or MMS can be easily forwarded and distributed among friends. But wait, there’s a catch! Each ticket can only be scanned once. So, only the first person to arrive can get in.
Now you are curious what if you cannot make it to the concert. You can still sell it to a friend. "You can go back to the site and set it up so the ticket can be sent out from the main site to your friend," says Lloyd.
Beyond ticketing, the technology can be adopted in diverse industries including airlines for issuing tickets and secure check-in, secure room key access… the list is endless.
India’s budget carrier Air Deccan has introduced the facility of mobile ticketing. Customers booking their tickets online would receive the ticket details through SMS including the PNR number. This is the ticket.
Asia Pacific is all set up to adopt this new ticketing solution. Mobile ticketing and coupon provider Mobiqa, has teamed up with Tickets.com to bring mobi-tickets at major venues and events throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Nokia is already gearing up to expand this technology in a big way. "The next stage is to pay for the ticket in one seamless transaction on the mobile," says Lloyd. "We want to move to total mobile ticketing, where you’ll get an SMS alert about a gig, and then buy tickets on your phone."
Mobile ticket is here to stay. More than just the convenience of wireless technology it saves us from the worries of ticket loss.
