The Alabama Tourism Department has Generated More Than Half a Million Dollars in Ticket Sales, Resulting in Revenue for Local Attractions – Here’s How They Did It

“Every state office of tourism has the same issue,” said Grey Brennan, Deputy Director of the Alabama Tourism Department. "We're all trying to help our industry as much as we can, but a lot of what we do as a state agency of tourism is brand promotion.

It’s a little bit harder to track whether projects we're working on are changing visitation and improving life for our citizens and our businesses here in Alabama,” he said. “But with something that tracks economic impact down to a product level such as the Alabama All-In-One ticket, we are now able to do that.” 

Why the All-In-One Ticket Matters to Visitors

Travelers are familiar with paid attraction passes that they’ve seen in other destinations, and the Alabama Tourism Department felt this was a needed asset. “This product is part of the infrastructure that visitors expect,” said Brennan. “There's this mechanism that they've used in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, or Miami that's already in place. So when they come to your destination, they believe it should be there. If it's not, they think that you're not serving them as a tourist destination.”

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Building the Alabama All-In-One Ticket

Alabama’s tourism partners first realized the importance of creating a bundled attraction ticket several years ago. Destinations throughout the state attempted to put together their own non-digital versions in their respective cities, but the manual, tedious process became too much work. The biggest pain point was the settlement of payments that were sent to attractions each month. 

The individual destinations didn’t care to deal with monthly accounting reconciliation, and neither did the state tourism office. When Brennan found Bandwango and learned that they offered managed accounting services, he saw a way to make this program work. 

“The money flows through Bandwango,” he said. “They settle all of the payments to all of our individual attractions.” He explained that some attractions are on multiple tickets and it’s important to make sure each business is paid appropriately. “That is very difficult,” added Brennan. “But Bandwango helps us with that tremendously.”

Once he realized the financial aspect of this could work, he invited all attractions in the state to participate, as long as they had regularly scheduled hours that allowed walk-up attendance (no reservations needed) and were willing to provide a wholesale rate. “I had no idea whether we'd have 10 people sign up, or 100,” Brennan said. “It was just open to all, and we ended up with about 65 attractions that have signed up.”

When the sign-up process ended, they took a look at what attractions signed up for the program and started creating a variety of All-In-One tickets that feature attractions throughout the state. Some tickets are city-based, and some are regional. Some areas even have specific tickets that focus on family attractions as well. Their thorough strategy also involved creating ticket options for various durations, such as 1, 2, 3, and 5-Day options. No matter where you’re going in Alabama, and how long you’re staying, there is a ticket option that is perfect for you.

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Results

With Bandwango’s real-time reporting data, the Alabama Tourism Department can access performance metrics at any time – and the results speak for themselves. 

• 16,372 – total number of passes sold
• $538,489.37 – total sales of the Alabama Attraction Passes 
• 0 – hours the Alabama Tourism Department spent on accounting reconciliation

The Alabama Tourism Department has put forth a dedicated effort that has shown amazing results for their state’s attractions. The All-In-One ticket has become both a revenue driver for attractions and a measurable economic impact tool for the state. 

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Top Selling Tickets

• 1-Day Florence, Muscle Shoals Multi-Attraction Pass
• 2-Day Huntsville and North Alabama Multi-Attraction Pass
• 1-Day Mobile Area Multi-Attraction Pass

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The All-In-One Ticket Has Also Given Visitors a Reason to Stay Longer

“We believe that the biggest benefit of the ticket package is getting people to explore and stay longer,” Brennan explained.

“We certainly think the tickets give people reasons to come, but I would say it's probably more attuned to give people reasons to stay longer, and to see things they would not have normally seen.”

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Tips for Success

The Alabama Tourism Department has seen tremendous success with their All-In-One ticket program. They’ve been able to create a new revenue stream for small and large attractions throughout the state, provide a resource that their visitors were seeking, increase the length of time visitors are staying in Alabama, and have hard data that shows the success of their program. Here are a few of the things they did that you can easily implement into your own strategy. 

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Use the pass as a way to offer promotion to an entire tourism segment 

“One of the problems we have as a state agency is if you're promoting an attraction, you have 30 other attractions who ask why you aren’t promoting them. So by having a product like the All-In-One ticket, you are automatically promoting 30 or 40, or in our case, 65 attractions at the same time,” said Brennan. 

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Create your own ticket rather than relying on a private company 

“If a private company was putting together this package,” said Brennan, “They would go after the most popular attractions, but they would not go after the other attractions that are equally as good, but are currently not as popular.” He was happy that this was something he could create himself so that he could offer the opportunity to all attractions in his state. This made it valuable to all of them, both large and small. 

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Be prepared to explain the pass to attractions 

At first, Brennan got one question over and over from attractions. He said, “Every attraction wanted to know how much business this would bring them – and we could not say.” Since the ticket has gone live, that question is a little easier to answer, but in the beginning, they had no projections at all. It was important that Brennan and his team communicated clearly that there was no risk to businesses. “We told them there was no reason for them to not join the ticket. The ticket was designed to give them extra revenue.”

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Make sure your attractions understand the additional marketing value, too

Even if someone doesn’t purchase an All-In-One ticket, there is still marketing value to a business that is listed on it. Brennan understands that sometimes a visitor may just want to visit one attraction and doesn’t want a bundled ticket. He shared, “If a visitor sees the tickets, they automatically assume those must be the best attractions in town. They then may go to those websites and buy those tickets individually. We believe that we not only help the attractions through the ticket sales we can document, but we help the attractions get even more business on their own that's undocumented.”

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Understand that some regions of the state will have less paid attractions than others. 

Some areas of Alabama have fewer attractions that have an admission price. Those areas still have value, but there just isn’t an ample amount of ticketed products to put on a bundled attraction pass. By defining the specific tickets after businesses signed up to participate, the Alabama Tourism Department was able to craft regional passes as well so that all attractions who wanted to be on a bundled ticket could have that opportunity. Brennan shared that the areas with more ticketed attractions have seen the most sales, though. 

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Consider creating different variations of your pass

Brennan explained the smart strategy behind their family-focused tickets. “We saw that many of the family attractions had a higher price point than others,” he said. “If you put the family attractions into the regular ticket, it increases that price substantially, but an adult who's just looking for attractions wouldn't go there, because they're not looking for a family-themed attraction.” Having a variety of different variations of the tickets has helped increase sales by allowing a visitor to find the perfect ticket that fits their own needs. 

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Don’t rule out in-state marketing, too

The Alabama Tourism Department may be tasked with promoting visitation to the state, but through a partnership with a state broadcasting association, they’ve also been able to secure in-state television and radio ads for the All-In-One ticket and that’s been an added bonus. They run these ads in addition to their out-of-state marketing and distribution on third-party websites such as Groupon, Viator, and GetYourGuide. 

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Get other destinations throughout the state to help share information on the ticket 

This is a tremendous asset to local destination marketing organizations throughout Alabama. Many of the local DMOs are doing their own promotion for the ticket in an effort to further help their local attractions. Several are sharing information on their websites and including it on their local blogs. 

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Make a video that explains the ticket 

The Alabama Tourism Department created a thorough video that explains their ticket perfectly and has this on their website. This lays out the entire process for a ticket holder in an easy-to-understand way and answers any questions a visitor could have.  

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Conclusion

So far, the Alabama All-In-One ticket has had more than half a million dollars in ticket sales. The Alabama Tourism Department has gone above and beyond to help their local businesses see a true impact and they’ve done a great job of promoting the ticket. 

The state tourism office isn’t trying to make money for their organization, but enjoys being able to increase revenue for their statewide attractions. As for the future of the All-In-One ticket, Brennan said, “As long as our attractions like it, I don’t see any reason at all that it would ever end.”

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If your destination is looking for a measurable way to support local attractions, extend visitor stays, and track real economic impact, paid attraction passes like the All-In-One ticket can be a valuable asset for local or statewide destinations. Set up some time with our team to learn more. 

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