Smart: Christmas store tickets!
It is early September and that means Christmas is just around the corner for your garden centre. However, Christmas will not be the same in 2020. For instance, you need to make sure there is enough distance between your visitors, you cannot let too many people in at the same time. Not to even mention the challenges of a restaurant. Garden Connect helps you by offering a smart online booking system so you can let customers book their visit in advance.
Making reservations in restaurants is a common thing to do, but you can also ask your visitors to make online reservations to visit your garden centre during busy weekends. By doing this, you prevent people from being disappointed by having to wait outside and you can maximise the number of visitors you get by using the booking system to spread footfall evenly over the day.
Online reservations
In the reservation system of Garden Connect you can easily make time slots indicating when people can enter your garden centre. By doing this, you avoid people coming all at the same time and make sure that they arrive throughout the day. Enter the maximum amount of people per time slot and as soon maximum capacity is reached, sales will automatically be stopped.
Visitors of your garden centre can choose for themselves on what day and at what time they want to come.
To pay online or not to pay online?
The opinions about whether to sell tickets online or to view the ticket solely as a reservation differ a lot among garden centres.
Our advice? Let the customer pay online but give him back the money as a form of a discount once they arrive.
In this way, you are sure that people will actually come to your garden centre and that there will be no open spots because people decided not to show up. Every reservation is linked to an e-ticket. This PDF file can be printed or showed on a mobile phone and contains a unique barcode. This barcode can be used only once and can be scanned via our free Garden Connect Events App.
Selling tickets in the garden centre?
Of course it has to be possible to sell tickets in your garden centre too. Via the Garden Connect platform, team members can easily sell tickets or issue reservations, for example at your customer services area. These will be mailed to the customer directly after finishing the reservation, so they do not have to be printed.
Yes, Christmas is coming!
You can automatically send a reminder to your customers just a few days before they come to your centre, restaurant or event.
In this reminder mail, you can give them a few tips and confirm the date and time one more time. Naturally, you can also mention a nice offer available for them.
Scan app for tickets
When your customer visits your garden centre they can show their e-ticket at the door. You can scan these tickets by using the free scan app that we have developed for you. Every ticket contains a barcode that can be used only once. The Scan App can be downloaded and used on any iOS or Android device.
Is the ticket valid? Then they can directly enjoy your Christmas show
How was it?
A few days after the visit you can automatically send an email to your visitors. Ask them to share pictures on social media, leave a review on Facebook or fill in an online survey. In this way, you encourage visitors to share beautiful moments and you collect points of improvement as well.
Restaurants & events
Naturally, you can use the reservations for multiple activities: a visit to your garden centre, a high-tea in your restaurant and, as soon as it is possible again, you can also sell tickets for workshops by using our ticketing system.
Do you want a reservation system for your Christmas events? Contact us today so you will be online on time. Mail us at info@gardenconnect.com or call +44 203 475 5541 for more information.
Picture: the annually Christmas show at Garden Centre Leurs.
