Timed entry and tickets for attractions

What an attraction needs from ticketing

Museums, caves, gardens, viewpoints and visitor centres sell entry, not seats on a bus. What matters is spreading visitors through the day, letting people in quickly, selling to walk-ins at the gate, and keeping repeat visitors and partners happy. A ticketing system that only sells online, or only at the desk, leaves you reconciling two lists at closing time.

Tourtify treats each entry time as a departure with its own capacity, so online sales, the desk, partners and marketplaces all draw from the same numbers. This guide covers how to set that up, what happens at the entrance and which plugins add revenue beyond the ticket.

Setting up timed entry

Create the attraction as a tour and add your ticket types as traveller types, such as adult, child, student or your own, each with a price and optional age rules. Infants can be priced at 0 and still count towards capacity. Then add a repeating schedule for each entry time, with the weekdays it runs and the capacity. An option can have up to 20 schedules, and departures are kept created up to a year ahead.

Worked example: hourly entry from 10:00 to 16:00 is seven schedules. At 80 visitors per slot, that is 560 a day. Online booking can stay open until the slot starts or close up to two weeks before. If a slot sells out, travellers can request the date, or join a waitlist with the Waitlist plugin, and seats from a cancellation go to the next in line.

The departures overview lists every slot across your attractions in a list or monthly calendar, with load and nearly-full alerts, so you can add capacity on a busy afternoon or stop sales on one slot without touching the rest. Blocked dates close the attraction for holidays or maintenance, and existing bookings are never touched.

At the entrance

QR tickets & check-in (Starter) emails each visitor a ticket with a QR code and a short code. Choose one ticket per traveller, which suits an entrance where each person passes, or one per booking. Staff scan with a phone browser, no special hardware needed. A second scan shows the ticket was already used, a ticket for another day is caught, and a cancelled ticket is refused. If a code won't read, staff type the eight characters.

Walk-ins are sold at the point-of-sale till (Growth), on a tablet or phone. It shows today's entry times with places left, takes split payments, prints 80mm receipts with QR tickets and keeps selling when the internet drops; the server re-checks every place when it syncs, so a slot is never oversold. Cash drawers have a float, a counted close and X and Z reports, and Stripe Terminal smart readers take cards.

Revenue beyond the ticket

Add-ons & extras (Growth) sells an audio guide per traveller, a guided tour per booking or a souvenir per item at checkout. At the till, retail items with stock counts go in the same sale. Dynamic pricing (part of Discounts on Growth) can add a weekend or time-of-day surcharge, or reward early booking. Rules never stack: only the highest-priority match applies, and the from-price on your site never rises because of a surcharge.

For regular visitors, Rentals, passes & memberships (Growth) sells punch cards, unlimited passes and monthly or annual memberships with a member discount and free entries each period. Gift vouchers sell entry as a present, and the voucher balance can be spent online or at the till.

Partners, marketplaces and Google

Hotels and agents can sell your tickets through Resellers & agents (Growth). Each partner has a referral code and commission rate, a portal to book for guests on account, and statements of what is owed. The Channel manager (Growth) connects GetYourGuide and Viator, and OCTO resellers such as Tiqets, Headout and Musement, with a buffer and allotment per channel so the gate always keeps some capacity.

Google Things to do lists your published tours in Google Search and Maps with prices and a link to book on your own site, through Tourtify's connectivity partnership once it is live for your account. Reports show sales by tour, channel and payment status, compared with the period before, and can be emailed to your team daily, weekly or monthly.

Moving from your current ticketing

Set up ticket types and entry times first, then import advance bookings so capacity is correct from the first day. Exports from FareHarbor, Rezdy, Bókun, Peek Pro and Checkfront are recognised automatically, and any other spreadsheet works by matching columns. A dry run lists problems before anything is imported, and imported bookings send no emails.

If you sell school or company visits on account, Company accounts (Growth) adds profiles with payment terms and credit limits, invoices addressed to the company and statements of what is owed. Invoices & tax receipts issues a numbered invoice for every booking and a credit note for every change.

Before opening day, open the scanner on the phones your staff will use and scan a test ticket, and run a test sale on the till with the drawer open. Both take minutes and catch most surprises.

Getting started

1. 1Add ticket types. Create the attraction and its traveller types with prices and any age rules.
2. 2Create entry times. Add a repeating schedule for each time slot with its capacity.
3. 3Switch on QR tickets. Choose tickets per visitor and set the scanning window.
4. 4Set up the till. Create a register and retail items, and pair a card reader if you use one.
5. 5Invite partners. Add agents and connect channels with a buffer so the gate keeps capacity.