In Car­ni­val’s past, fete-go­ers would lis­ten at­ten­tive­ly to ads or in­tense­ly scour fly­ers or on­line posts for tick­et out­lets or com­mit­tee mem­bers in their gen­er­al area to know when and how they could get tick­ets in their hands.

In re­cent years, the odd event flirt­ed with tech­nol­o­gy, al­low­ing for on­line pur­chas­es.

How­ev­er, that process was main­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed by cred­it card pur­chas­es, mak­ing these sales more promi­nent among the for­eign mar­ket than the lo­cal con­tin­gent.

This year, that trend has changed.

Two of the main pi­o­neers of elec­tron­ic tick­et­ing have not­ed a surge in the use of elec­tron­ic tick­ets for events in this year’s Car­ni­val.

CEO and chair­man of Sun Tixx, Jean-Marc Aimey has es­ti­mat­ed that about 60 per cent of Car­ni­val events this sea­son have opt­ed to use elec­tron­ic tick­et­ing, with sev­er­al even opt­ing to sell on­line tick­ets on­ly.

This change, Aimey ex­plained, was a wel­comed by-prod­uct of the pan­dem­ic.

“What we have been see­ing trend-wise is an up­take in on­line tick­et­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and this is the re­sult of a com­bi­na­tion of things. Peo­ple hav­ing to im­merse them­selves in the on­line ex­pe­ri­ence due to the pan­dem­ic and per­form­ing a lot of things on­line.

“From or­der­ing food, and gro­ceries, and all of these dif­fer­ent things that they’ve had to fall in­to. And, from this, cou­pled with the banks in­tro­duc­ing the Visa deb­it card, as the client card which al­lowed for the blos­som­ing of e-com­merce on the whole dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od,” said Aimey in a phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

Matthew Enci­nas, chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer at Is­land E-Tick­ets, agreed that the de­ci­sion by lo­cal banks to switch to chip cards has great­ly helped busi­ness, along with im­prove­ments to lo­cal on­line bank­ing ser­vices that made pro­mot­ers more will­ing to choose elec­tron­ic tick­ets as an op­tion.

“We have a lot more peo­ple who are will­ing to trans­act on­line be­cause of that. Sec­ond­ly, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, all the banks re­al­ly pushed hard on Visa cards so more peo­ple have ac­cess to cards. Third­ly, more pro­mot­ers put their events on­line,” said Enci­nas con­cern­ing the in­crease in busi­ness.

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny had grad­u­al­ly seen an in­crease in the use of elec­tron­ic tick­ets over the years, with the plat­form see­ing a peak dur­ing the 2020 Car­ni­val. Enci­nas ad­mit­ted that when the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try was shut down, the Is­land E-Tick­et team thought they had lost mo­men­tum.

“We’ve been grow­ing year af­ter year, right be­fore the pan­dem­ic was our best year. It is re­al­ly when every­where shut down that we shut down as well. But it was a nice sur­prise that when things start­ed back, the up­ward trend, it con­tin­ued and even sur­passed our ex­pec­ta­tions,” said Enci­nas.

Aimey said he had no­ticed the shift from as far back as April last year when most re­stric­tions in place as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had been lift­ed and events were set to re­sume.

He ex­plained that he not­ed an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple who un­der­stood how e-tick­et plat­forms work and a de­crease in the scep­ti­cism or re­luc­tance from those who still hadn’t ful­ly grasped the con­cept.

“You’re see­ing a lot of peo­ple who still don’t get it. They don’t un­der­stand this on­line tick­et thing. Gen­uine­ly. But they are ac­cept­ing that it is not just the fu­ture, but it is now the present. So that they are now chal­leng­ing them­selves to get through with it,” he said.

“In the past, they would have had peo­ple who would be like, ‘I don’t trust this on­line thing. That piece of pa­per thing on the com­put­er that any­body could copy’. You’re not hear­ing that kind of di­a­logue any­more,” he said.

Enci­nas al­so not­ed that both pro­mot­ers and pa­trons were al­so ac­knowl­edg­ing the ad­van­tages of go­ing dig­i­tal.

“I think a lot more peo­ple are ac­cept­ing the on­line tick­et and the pro­mot­ers and pa­trons see the ben­e­fit of us­ing it, for the con­ve­nience and the ac­count­ing and the abil­i­ty to reach your cus­tomers af­ter the event. All the ad­van­tages that on­line gives you I think it’s be­com­ing ap­par­ent,” said Enci­nas.

How­ev­er, both e-tick­et plat­forms con­firmed that the larg­er events still large­ly re­lied on phys­i­cal tick­ets.

Enci­nas ex­plained, “It de­pends on the event. Some events go ful­ly on­line, some events do a mix­ture. It de­pends on the scale of the event. So if you’re try­ing to have an event with 40,000 peo­ple, you’re more like­ly to al­so print some tick­ets be­cause you’re try­ing to max­imise (on pa­tron­age), there’s no lim­it to the event re­al­ly, it’s just how much you can sell. For small­er events go­ing on­line on­ly is eas­i­er.”

Aimey al­so ex­plained that pro­mot­ers of larg­er or prici­er events like all-in­clu­sive fetes would opt for phys­i­cal tick­ets due to cost fac­tors and se­cu­ri­ty op­tions which are eas­i­er im­ple­ment­ed on print­ed tick­ets.

All in all, both plat­forms were grate­ful that more e-com­merce op­tions were be­ing in­tro­duced that would al­low their busi­ness­es to grow fur­ther.

In No­vem­ber, Is­land E-Tick­ets fi­nal­ly al­lowed for the use of deb­it cards from lo­cal banks. Enci­nas said while most of their busi­ness still came from cred­it cards; the new busi­ness was wel­comed.

“The deb­it card sales have been slow. And I think it’s just about the econ­o­my and the avail­abil­i­ty of funds a lot more peo­ple will pur­chase a tick­et with a cred­it card com­pared to a deb­it card, but the deb­it card traf­fic is not in­signif­i­cant. But there were still a bit of quirks that the banks are still try­ing to work out, some cards don’t work all the time,” he said.

Enci­nas said as things get more evolved they will get bet­ter.

Aimey not­ed there were still gaps as there were sev­er­al mem­bers of the pub­lic who can’t ac­cess their ser­vices.

“There is still a siz­able de­mo­graph­ic of peo­ple who are un­der­served by, the on­line tick­et­ing mar­ket. Gen­er­al­ly be­ing the grass­roots be­cause we still have a siz­able un­banked pop­u­la­tion. Right. And we still have peo­ple who while they do have a bank ac­count, do not bank gen­er­al­ly,” said Aimey, who ex­plained that Sun Tixx was aim­ing to restart its arrange­ment with the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, which al­lowed for e-tick­ets to be pur­chased at Lot­to booths.

He said the com­pa­ny was aim­ing to have this sys­tem restart­ed in time for Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta, next Sat­ur­day.

In the in­ter­im, both Sun Tixx and Is­land E-Tick­ets are hop­ing for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of e-com­merce op­tions as they note that var­i­ous banks and busi­ness­es have brought for­ward in­no­va­tions and en­tries in­to the mar­ket.

“Every lit­tle bit helps,” said Aimey.