An attraction membership and annual pass programme works when every rule on the card is written down once and checked the same way everywhere: who the card covers, how often they may come, how many guests they bring, which days it is not valid and what members pay for extras. Decide those rules first, freeze them on each card when it is sold, and let the gate read them.
Members come back in the quiet months, and renewals are money you can see coming. They are also where schemes get untidy: a plan changed mid-year, a family of six on a card for five, a member who swears they have not been in today. In iTravel Attractions each of those is a rule the plan holds and the gate checks, and every rule is yours.
What does a membership plan have to decide?
A plan belongs to a venue. Each setting is your decision:
- Who the card covers. One person, two, or a household of up to twelve, with an optional limit on adults. People are named at sale; more people or adults than the plan allows is refused.
- How long it runs. 1, 3, 6, 12 or 24 months from the day it starts, or a fixed season. A season card bought early starts on the season's first day; one bought halfway through ends with the season.
- Visits. A limit per day and, for a punch pass, a number of visits in all. No total means unlimited.
- Guests. Guests per visit, and optionally a cap on guest visits across the card.
- Member price. A percentage off tickets bought with the card's number: tickets only, never add-ons, and never with a promo code.
- Blackout days. Up to 20 date ranges when the card is not valid; overlapping ranges are merged.
- Grace days. Up to 60 days after the last day when the card still admits, the gate saying it is in grace.
- What it admits and where it is sold. The products it covers (none listed means all, including later ones), sold online, at the box office, or both.
Where two settings disagree, such as more adults than people, the form says so on that field rather than picking one for you. A plan is paused or archived, never deleted, because the cards sold from it still depend on it.
Which kind of pass fits your venue?
| What you want | How to set it | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| An annual pass for locals | 12 months from the day it starts, one visit a day | Easy to explain; your keenest members visit far more than the price assumes |
| A season pass | A fixed season | Every card ends on one day, so renewals come in one wave and a late buyer gets fewer days |
| A punch pass | Visits in all, with time enough to use them | Use is capped; say in your terms what happens to unused visits |
| A household card | People up to N, adults at most 2 | One card for the family; the whole party enters as one visit |
| A pass that brings friends | Guests per visit plus a guest cap | Members recruit for you; the cap stops one card admitting a club |
The card's life, from sale to lapse
A card is pending when sold, active once paid, and lapses after its last day plus any grace days. It can be paused and resumed, and you can cancel it with a reason. Each change happens once: two staff pressing the same button, or a retried request, change nothing twice.
The plan's rules are frozen on the card at sale. Raise the price or cut the guest allowance next spring and cards already sold keep what their members bought. Pause a card from one day, resume it on another, and its end moves on by the days it was paused. A cancellation records its reason; any refund is a separate decision on the order.
The Members page finds a card by a person's name, the card number or the buyer's email, counts cards in each state, and opens a card's people, days and last visits.
Members at the gate, online and offline
A member's QR code, on the card page their email links to, is signed with the venue's key. It carries the card, the venue, the last day, visits a day, guests, grace and blackout days. No name, no email.
Online, the normal case, the gate phone asks the server, which checks the card's state, days, limits and people, then records the entry once per scan; the same scan sent twice counts once. The steward sees a first name and initial, the people on the card and which visit this is. The whole party enters as one visit, and a "+1 guest" tap adds guests within the allowance. A photo per person, taken at the box office or uploaded by the member, shows on the online answer only. It never travels in the phone's offline list.
Offline, the phone checks the signature, venue and days itself, against a short list of cards that must not come in today (paused, payment due, ended, cancelled, not paid) and the day's visits so far. The entries are recorded on the cards when it reconnects; an entry that happened is never refused afterwards. More on a dead signal in offline ticket scanning.
Members and timed capacity
This changes how you set slots. A member card is checked against its own rules; it does not take a place in a timed slot. Today's admitted figure counts members and their guests, but the inside-now figure counts tickets. If you sell 300 places an hour and members walk in on top, a slot's sold number is not the number of people inside.
Three ways to handle it, and the choice is yours:
- Leave room. Set slot capacity below what the building holds by the members you expect on a busy day. The arithmetic is in timed-entry slot capacity.
- Ask members to book. A member wanting a guaranteed time buys a timed ticket at the member price, and it takes its place in the slot. Online, an order the member price would make free is refused: the card is the free entry.
- Watch the day. Members let in are counted on Today and in the hourly gate report.
Selling memberships online and at the box office
Online, each plan has its own shop page: the card, what it gives, the people on it (adult or child) and the buyer. Payment goes through your own payment page like any order. The card stays pending until the money arrives, then starts from the venue's today and is emailed once. Product pages offer the venue's memberships, so a family looking at day tickets sees the pass. If a season ends before a late payment lands, the order is left for you to refund rather than issuing a card that cannot start.
At the box office, the cashier sells a plan on the open shift: the people, cash or the terminal, an optional email. The card starts today, and the money sits in that shift's totals like any sale (see box office cash-up).
Renewals, and the report that shows how the scheme is doing
Reminders go 30 and 7 days before a card's last day and on the day itself, in the language it was bought in, with a renewal link. Members renew from 30 days before the end until 90 days after it, at the plan's current price, while you still sell the plan online. Renewing by the last day keeps the card continuous; renewing after it starts a new term from the day they pay. Either way the current rules are frozen on the card again and the term's visits restart from zero. Automatic charging of a saved card is not built: a renewal is a payment the member makes.
Reports, under Members & gift cards, show memberships sold and membership money earned month by month, each card's price spread over its days, exportable as CSV. The same report shows what is owed on gift cards, the other money a venue lives on between peaks.
A worked example: a family pass
Illustrative numbers, in whatever currency you sell in. A day ticket is 25 for an adult and 15 for a child, so two adults and three children pay 95 a visit. You set a plan:
- Family annual: 12 months, 5 people, at most 2 adults, price 300.
- One visit a day; 2 guests per visit, 10 guest visits in all.
- Member price 10%; two festival days blacked out; 7 grace days.
Three visits on day tickets cost 285; a fourth makes 380. The pass pays for itself on the fourth visit, so its price is a bet on how often a family comes.
Bought on 1 November, it runs to 31 October. The report spreads 300 over its 365 days: about 25 earned in November. The grandparents join in February: two guest taps, 2 of 10 guest visits used. Two tickets for friends bought with the card's number cost 50 less 10%, so 45.
The family is away from 1 to 20 March. You pause the card on 1 March and resume it on 21 March, and its end moves 20 days, to 20 November. Reminders follow: 21 October, 13 November, 20 November. Renewing on 15 November after you raise the price to 320, they pay 320 and the card runs to 20 November next year. If they forget, the gate admits them until 27 November with "in grace", the card lapses on the 28th, and they can renew online until 18 February with a fresh term.
Checklist before you sell the first card
- Write the plan in one sentence a member would repeat to a friend.
- Set people and adults so the households you actually see fit.
- Choose visits a day and any total, and say what happens to unused visits.
- Decide guests per visit and a guest cap with your busiest weekend in mind.
- List this year's blackout days now, not the week before a festival.
- Choose grace days, or none, and tell members which.
- Set the member price, knowing it does not combine with promo codes.
- Leave room in timed slots for members, or ask them to book.
- Decide your refund rule for a cancelled membership; nothing is refunded automatically.
- Sell one card to yourself, scan it twice in a day (the second is refused), add a guest, pause and resume it, and check the end moved.
