10 minute read
TALKING TICKETS
Just the ticket
How Tixel helped Bournemouth 7s, the sports and music festival, keep attendance up and refunds down
After launching as a rugby festival in 2008 to a crowd of 8,000, Bournemouth 7s has quickly grown into one of the world’s largest sport and music festivals. Showcasing everything from netball and hockey to dodgeball and CrossFit, along with a music festival across 12 themed arenas, the event is now attended by 30,000 fans, including 4,000 campers and glampers, 2,000 VIPS and 400 sports teams.
In 2021, the Bournemouth 7s team partnered with Tixel, an online platform designed for safe ticket resale. It would be the festival’s first outing with COVID-19 restrictions in play.
NO-SHOWS AND REFUND REQUESTS
With the UK’s “Freedom Day” (July 19) taking place only one month prior to the event, the Bournemouth 7s team took on an astonishing feat – putting together a 30,000 capacity sports and music festival in just 42 days. With their work cut out for them, the last thing the team needed was a heavy workload for refund requests and resale enquiries.
Bournemouth 7s engaged Tixel and relaunched the sell-out festival. With the UK coming out of lengthy lockdowns and restrictions on events, Bournemouth 7s 2021 required all attendees to show proof of their COVID-19 status — vaccination, a negative lateral flow test, or natural immunity.
Such proof is now a requirement to run a safe festival, but these measures can also increase the rate of no-shows and refund requests if a ticketholder can no longer attend the event/festival. Thankfully for Bournemouth 7s, this wasn’t the case.
Callie Worth, commercial manager, explained: “If individuals unfortunately caught COVID-19 or simply couldn’t attend the new dates, they were directed towards Tixel. This was a great way for fans to essentially get their money back — while replacing the attendee with a new customer who could attend our event.”
EASING THE WORKLOAD
The Tixel partnership allowed Bournemouth 7s to do several things: • Successfully operate a norefunds policy by offering a safe place for fans to trade tickets if they were unwell, had a change of plans, or didn’t meet the COVID-19 safety requirements in time for the event. • Reduce the workload of event staff by redirecting all refund and resale ticketing enquiries to Tixel; and • Harness fresh audience data from a waitlist to run targeted ticket sales campaigns for the 2022 event.
Worth continued: “Our fans successfully traded more than 1,000 tickets, which is incredible and something we were very impressed with. By reselling these tickets, it saved us a number of no-shows and kept our festival atmosphere alive. The site felt busy, particularly on the Saturday, which was really helped by the resale tickets.
“Our Tixel partnership definitely helped with our workload. It was really easy for us to redirect customers to the Tixel website and encourage them to resell their ticket rather than offer a refund, as we operate a no refunds policy.
“Tixel was incredibly helpful, and customers found it easy to use which helped us hugely. It was also great for us to redirect individuals to Tixel to try and resell their ticket, so that we knew we weren’t completely losing out on a customer if it was being resold.”
FRESH AUDIENCE DATA
With COVID-19 restrictions in place, waitlists have become more important than ever to help sell-out festivals and events. By having a dynamic waitlist in place with Tixel, Bournemouth 7s fans could see the moment a ticket was listed for sale and secure it without having to wait for new release announcements or risk being caught out by ticket touts on unregulated marketplaces or Facebook event pages.
Not only that, but the data also collected by the Bournemouth 7s waitlist meant that the festival’s marketing team could now target customers it didn’t know it had. Now, by targeting people who missed out on tickets to the 2021 event, Bournemouth 7s has an audience of eager fans ready to buy tickets for 2022 – minimising the marketing spend they would have previously needed to reach these fans.
TRANSFER TICKETS
Tixel’s promoter tool enabled Bournemouth 7s to take control of its ticketing strategy and provided a fair and safe place for fans to transfer tickets. Worth concluded: “We would definitely recommend Tixel as a resale platform. Their amazing team was easy to contact, and any issues were dealt with immediately, which was hugely appreciated. The biggest benefit for us was the ease of re-directing people to Tixel for resale enquiries, taking away the workload from processing refunds. We are very much looking forward to working with Tixel again for the 2022 festival!”
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Furnished with ideas
Furniture experts discuss event trends and new products
When COVID-19 hit, every supplier within the sector was impacted. “What I quickly realised was that it actually was a blessing in disguise,” explained Graham Jones, managing director of GBJ Event Hire. “I had time to ask clients what they wanted, what worked well and what didn’t, and I actually had time to implement the changes – new branding and a new website to showcase our new and exciting hire stock.”
GBJ Event Hire, which supplied Goodwood Revival 2021 with “timeless Chesterfield furniture”, has recently launched a Cordiale Bar range. “The Cordiale Vanilla and Bianco bars light up all types of events, whether its corporate cocktails or an exclusive VVIP product launch.”
Jones believes in only adding “quality” items to GBJ Event Hire’s portfolio, so that he can continue to service high-profile clients, such as Abbey Road Studios, with high-end cocktail bars and lounge furniture.
He said: “Fashions come and go so quickly these days that my philosophy of only adding quality items to our hire stock is really appreciated by our growing number of repeat clients. We love the amazing furniture designs by Emma J Shipley, who I believe we stock exclusively together with the very best Italiandesigned furniture and bars.”
Ian Harvey, director of Furniture on the Move, concurred. The pandemic has provided furniture providers with the opportunity to engage suppliers on a deeper level in readiness for the return of events.
FURNITURE ON THE MOVE
Whilst the last 18 months has been tough on the sector, it is important that furniture experts remain on top of trends and provide organisers with furniture items that meet their requirements and match expectations.
Harvey added: “This last year has been so very different from normal, but it has given us a chance to be much more hands on with our suppliers. With no trade shows taking place, our suppliers have been very pro-active, setting up virtual tours enabling us to see their stock in showrooms from Italy to Indonesia and allowing us to make more interesting choices for the year ahead. It’s certainly been a challenging purchasing process though.
“This year we’ve had such a huge range of furniture to research, as two seasons worth of designs have given us a fantastic broad brush to paint with. We have seen a real resurgence in bright colours and soft velvets, which we love. Some of our new pieces have a fantastic 1970s retro vibe to them.”
MARKET CONFIDENCE
Xpect Furniture, GL events’ furniture division, is planning to launch a sustainable chair and bar stool in 2022. According to Michelle Amer, sales director at Xpect Furniture, it is a theme a lot of organisers are asking for. “Xpect Furniture is a business with sustainability at the forefront of their operations, hence they aim to develop this within their product range in 2022 and beyond,” said Amer.
In 2021, Xpect Furniture supplied furniture and floor coverings to several conferences and exhibitions, including COP26, The Labour Party Conference, Home Building and Renovating, Frieze London and Frieze Masters. In 2022, the company has been appointed as the priority furniture supplier for Farnborough Air Show, Eye Fair, Harrogate Fashion Week, and many more.
Amer commented: “Exhibition and conference organisers appear to be a lot more confident for 2022. Many organisers have already made bookings for 2022, from January through to the end of the year.
“Event organisers are requesting ‘high-end’ style single chairs, enabling them to allow for social distancing. There has been a definite decline in requests for sofas or benches.”
But what style of furniture are organisers and event planners requesting? Is there demand for products that promote social distancing? Harvey explained that Furniture on the Move has a “whole gamut” of items within its repertoire to suit a range of styles and designs.
Events have returned in abundance; event planners are looking to make an impression and 2022 will be an interesting year. Harvey said: “From around May this year, it was absolutely fantastic to see the events industry rise from nothing at all to a tidal wave of work normally only reserved for that crazy part of the year where all festivals, brand experiences and launches are all happening at the same time.
“It was wonderful to see some old friends and familiar faces on site at the events we have been part of in the last six months. There have been some casualties and some new start-ups, and some companies have risen from the ashes, but it seems we are all busy and all excited about the year ahead and the fantastic industry that we operate in.”
Jones concluded: “From January onwards, we are looking forward to once again continuing to provide furniture, lighting and bars to our exceptional repeat client base who continue to return month after month, year after year. At the same time, enquiries for spring/summer 2022 have been off the scale.”
