Gateway Ticketing Systems celebrated its 35th anniversary in July. Originally incorporated in 1988, Gateway grew from its beginnings as a tiny tech company predominantly working with bus ticketing to become the preferred ticketing provider for more than 500 clients around the world, in sectors including theme parks, attractions, museums, zoos, and aquariums.
Now a world leader in admission control and ticketing software, the firm additionally offers consulting services and revenue generation solutions to help venues increase operational efficiency, improve guest experience and drive revenue growth.
As the firm marks this milestone, Michael Andre, Scott Trievel and Nell Smoyer talk to blooloop about the company’s evolution.
Gateway’s legacy of innovation
Michael Andre is president & CEO of Gateway Ticketing Systems, Inc. He outlines Gateway’s history of innovation in the sector:
“In the early days, one of our first innovations was a PC-based ticketing system. This printed a ticket on demand at the time of the transaction, when the guest was at the box office or the ticket window.
“In the first two years, when we worked with large national bus companies, it became a matter of networking all the point-of-sale systems to be able to unify their reporting. This was all before the internet existed. We used our own modem and dial-up networking to collect sales data for our customers – all things that are instantly available at our fingertips today.
“Back then, it was a huge success just to produce a nightly sales report available the next morning for the previous day’s transactions.”
Concerning standout moments during the last three and a half decades, he adds:
“Technology-wise, certainly the innovation of the national networking capability that we built into our product in the early days was a standout. There were local area networking systems at the time that were just not suited for the types of functionalities that we were looking for. That itself, in terms of an internal project, was very innovative.
“Along the way, of course, we’ve had hundreds of projects and interesting customers. In general terms, when there is a major attraction opening or a major theme park, and we’re part of that, providing the solutions and systems that help operate those venues, that is what drives our passion, both for me personally, and us as a company. It’s a supporting role. But something that stands out is when a new venue opens, and we do our small part of it to make it successful.”
Entering the attractions business
From its origins in the transport industry, the firm began to diversify in the early 90s, when it started working with a large theme park company.
“Our software, though it was originally designed for the bus transport industry, was very flexible, whether you were selling a bus ticket, a theme park ticket, or an attraction ticket. It was all about the ease of use for the ticket seller: the flexibility in configuring various formats for what the ticket looked like physically, the pricing, the accounting transaction, and processing. That carried over very nicely into the attractions space.”
The company worked in both those large markets until 2017. This is when they decided to sell the intellectual property for the bus ticketing solution:
“We sold to a really good company that’s carrying forward with a focus on that marketplace, primarily in the US and Canada.”
In terms of developments for the future, to an extent, COVID-19 has had an influence:
“As a geographically diverse company with offices in London in the UK and Calgary in Canada as well as working with clients all around the world, we were already accustomed to working remotely. However, the pandemic did drive a couple of things.
“Video conferencing technology became a dominating force so we could all work at home effectively. For our industry and our customers, one change concerned capacity management and time ticketing. When venues were able to open during COVID-19, they had to manage their capacity very closely. We’ve always had capabilities in the system to do timed ticketing and manage capacity.
“During COVID, we extended those capabilities because an increasing number of our customers needed those functions to manage their capacity.”
Changing technologies
Another change concerned the need for contactless service as venues reopened:
“More functions were required whereby guests could manage their transactions, buy tickets in advance, and also memberships and annual passes, at any time of the day, whenever it’s most convenient to them, without having to go to the annual pass the membership window at the park or museum.”
Touching on how this is likely to develop in the future, he comments:
“This evolution of functionality starts with the most typical and the most frequent transactions. Then it starts to progress to the less frequent, more complex ones that are typically handled at a guest service level. We’re seeing more of those being able to be managed online now.”
Regarding trends, he observes:
“Attendance, as has been widely reported, has bounced back in terms of parks and other venues after COVID. We have certainly seen guests tending to focus on the quality of experience over quantity and have our customers respond in their approach to the way they’re managing their business. On the financial aspect, we’re seeing better yields.”
Gateway Ticketing Systems & the rise of dynamic pricing
This is something he attributes to dynamic pricing:
“A flat-rate price throughout the year evolved into charging more for peak times and less for off-peak times. Now that’s becoming even more dynamic, being done intelligently, according to yield management, and helping guests who have time variability to select a price that they want to pay if they’re able and willing to visit on a different day.”
“Weekdays, for example, are typically a slower day at a venue, and where guests do have that flexibility in their visit date, they may be able to enjoy a lower cost. For more mission-oriented customers, that’s essentially a great benefit, because it’s always crowded on a Saturday at a museum or aquarium, and they’re able to manage their capacity and their yield management through our systems.”
In terms of accessibility, he adds:
“Providing more economical ticket pricing at off-peak periods and on other days helps demographics who may not have the wherewithal to pay higher prices. We’re seeing this variability in pricing getting more precise, and more sophisticated as we move forward. It’s not just a benefit to the venue, but also to the guests as well.”
Staying ahead of the trends
Returning to the extent to which the industry has changed over the last 35 years, Andre comments:
“What is fantastic to see is the evolution of the guest experience, and how the dominant players in the industry are delivering what it means to be at a museum for the day or at a theme park for the day. They are employing more technology in intelligent ways, not just technology for the sake of technology – and they’re doing it in a way that makes that technology invisible, while significantly enhancing the guest experience. Being in the technology industry, I think that’s just fascinating.”
The way people’s relationship with IP is advancing is another interesting phenomenon, he comments, as people’s sense of ownership drives a desire to explore the imagined worlds served to them, becoming protagonists in their own right:
“Much of it is movie-driven, of course. Game of Thrones, for example, is encouraging tourism as people go and see the locations where the movies were filmed, which is driving the visitor experience, and the tourism economy. It’s broadening people’s view of the world in a fascinating way.”
Three decades with Gateway Ticketing Systems
Scott Trievel has been with Gateway for over 30 years and serves as the senior manager of managed services. He tells blooloop:
“When I was hired at Gateway as a software developer 31 years ago, there were about seven to 10 people at the organisation; four or five of us were the developers. Back in those days, we didn’t just develop the software, we also went on-site to deploy it and did the support. We did requirements gathering, we did documentation, we did training: the gamut of everything that had to be done.”
After the product development piece, Gateway Ticketing Systems’ focus was predominantly on two areas of business: respectively transportation, and amusements and attractions. Initially, Trievel became the product manager for the transportation side:
“As the years went by, the transportation side started falling to the wayside, while the amusement side took off. The company expanded. By this time, we had a lot of departments – a QA department, a product development department, customer service staff, an accountant.”
It was a far cry from the 10 people who had constituted the company when Trievel joined. He adds:
“I had an opportunity to work in a different realm. Program managers are project managers for new software development. When a request comes through from a customer, the program manager will be the person who deals with that, working with the development team, the quality assurance team, the documentation team, and so on.
“I managed that team, then, around eight years ago, we decided to create a managed service department supporting customers, configurations, new implementations, and so on – more advanced support, essentially, and I became the manager of that department.”
Technology develops
In its earliest iteration, Gateway Ticketing Systems was using PCs and DOS applications:
“I don’t even remember what email looked like back then,” he comments. “When I started, we communicated with customers over the phone, and had pads to take messages by hand, then you would call that customer back. There were no help systems at that time where a customer could submit a ticket automatically. If you wanted to be face-to-face, you had to drive or fly to be there.”
Concerning technical development, he says:
“Networking was primitive at the beginning. There was nothing, really, around servers; we had to use different methods. As far as progression was concerned, DisneyQuest was the first time I made the jump to using an SQL-based product. You then see differences in the databases of how data was stored from sometimes proprietary data to public domain software that could easily be taken from that box and then used for other applications.
“The other thing that changed, too, is the way that our customers do business in that much of it has gone more to an event and time-based thing. A lot of it had to do with COVID because you had to be restricted around how many people were in the park, but I think what customers learned then is that it was a better way for them to capacity-manage, being able to offer different things. The dynamic pricing model emerged from that.”
Gateway & Disney Quest
During his career, as well as watching Gateway Ticketing Systems grow from 10 to over 150 people, he has been part of numerous interesting projects.
“From my transportation days when I first came on board, there were pretty big things going on. Greyhound Canada was one of our customers, primarily a transportation bus and express package service. They decided to do an airline project, which was exciting because it was a different business opportunity for us. Unfortunately, Greyhound Air only lasted for a few years. From the attraction side, I’d have to say my most exciting, but also most challenging project was DisneyQuest.”
DisneyQuest, a Disney FEC, was located in downtown Disney, Orlando:
“I was working with technologies that I’d never worked with before. It was exciting because I got to learn new things, but it was a new site, a new customer, and a new tool.
“The other exciting thing, though it doesn’t directly concern a customer base, was establishing the managed service department. The team that I work with is a fantastic group of people, and it’s exciting to work with them.”
Part of the Gateway community
Nell Smoyer, who has been involved with the product for 15 years, currently serves as the Galaxy Connect supply partner manager. Outlining the path that brought her to the role, she tells blooloop:
“I started in the IT world as a trainer for a Fortune 500 company. I did that for 15 years, working with multiple systems. Then I got to a point in my life where I wanted to get out of corporate America and move into a smaller organisation.
“I had been aware of this company called Gateway Ticketing Systems in my hometown – I would drive past it, but I wasn’t fully aware of what they did. I knew they were involved with tickets somehow, but that was the extent of it. Then they came up on my job search.”
They were looking for someone to do implementations for their ticketing system. She applied, and got the job:
“So, I began as an implementation specialist for Gateway in 2007, travelling, visiting our customers to do training and upgrades and so on.”
However, after a few years, she left to work for a customer:
“I went out to the Grand Canyon to work for Grand Canyon Resort Corporation for seven years, using the Galaxy Ticketing system, and supporting all their revenue systems. Then, after seven years, I felt that I wanted to go home to Gateway. I was still in touch with all the people that I worked with. I started a dialogue about coming back, and they welcomed me back with open arms.”
Gateway’s Galaxy Connect
She has been in her current role since 2017, working on the Galaxy Connect product, which was a new innovation for Gateway at that time. She comments:
“We have other people, too, who have gone to other positions and then later returned. There is always such a sense of community with this company. It starts with Michael and flows down to everyone.”
The Gateway team is comprised of people who are, she contends, more than co-workers:
“That spreads out to our customers: it’s a strong community. We are involved with the people who use our systems regularly, and it becomes more than just a job. It’s more like establishing friendships across the board.”
In terms of innovation, she adds, Gateway is an exceptional company:
“I feel very lucky because in 2016 they released Galaxy Connect. It won the IAAPA Brass Ring Best New Product Award that year, and they went on to patent it. I got to come in when Connect had just been released, in time to begin to grow that product. I was so excited when I heard about Connect and what it could do, and I’m just thrilled to be working with that product.”
What’s new with Gateway Ticketing Systems?
Smoyer works with customers to help them establish sales channels with online travel agencies (OTAs) around the globe.
“An example of a recent customer that came on board with Connect is Palace Entertainment,” she comments. “They have multiple parks, and in the last couple of months, we’ve successfully launched over a hundred channels for them or with them through their various parks and various OTAs, providing them then with direct-to-gate tickets for all the sales that happen through those channels.”
Regarding current projects, she adds:
“We are in the middle of launching something called Direct to Connect right now. It’s a product that will allow multi-attraction pass products to go directly to the gate, for a much easier process of entering our attractions. Pass products all have their own unique process. That will be a big win in terms of usability.
“Then in February of this year, we moved to Connect version 1.5. It was our first major upgrade; we upgraded the US environment.”
There are three environments: the US, Hong Kong, and the UK environments.
“We upgraded our US environment to Connect 1.5., to help with performance and give us some additional capabilities in the system. Our goal is to have the other two environments upgraded by the end of the year.”
Creating a community
Looking towards developments in the longer term, she says:
“We have a few things that are on our radar right now. We’re looking at making some upgrades to the way our packages perform through Connect. A package means that the attraction is selling the admission ticket along with maybe a drink, a meal, or a gift from the gift shop. We’re also always just looking for ways to improve the platform.”
Concerning emerging patterns, she adds:
“The biggest thing that I notice is the online sales. Guests want to buy their tickets on a website where they can get everything; they want to be able to book a hotel, airfare, and so on, so we’re seeing a lot of people seeking what is effectively an Amazon for travel. Particularly since COVID, people want to do one-stop shopping. Part of the reason I believe we’re seeing such success with Connect is because we can join with those OTAs and provide the direct-to-gate tickets.”
Identifying what makes Gateway Ticketing Systems a success, Smoyer says:
“I’m going to keep using that word ‘community’. Gateway is such a success because the approach that we take is that we’re building a system for our customers. We are taking their feedback and their requests and building our product to accommodate them. The customers’ needs are our needs. We’re not just building a product and saying, ‘Here it is, here you go.’ We’re doing the opposite: ‘What do you need? What do you want?’
“And then we’re constantly growing, based on the needs of our customers. Once a park or an attraction becomes our customer, that relationship grows and strengthens, and that’s what keeps people with us: community.”
The Gateway Ticketing Systems team will be exhibiting at IAAPA Expo 2023 in Orlando, at booth #4847
