Combo tickets for attractions: one price, every gate checks its own

Combo tickets for attractions work when the combo is sold at one price but issued as separate tickets, one per part, each checked by the gate of the venue it belongs to. Every part takes its own place, all or nothing. The combo moves and cancels as one, and each part keeps its share of the price, so every venue's report shows what it sold.

Get any of that wrong and the combo becomes the ticket your staff dread: the guest the second venue cannot scan, the cruise sold out under a museum booking that went through, the month-end argument about whose money it was. Here is how iTravel Attractions builds combos, and where the decisions are yours.

What is a combo, and what is it not?

A combo is a ticket of its own kind made of parts: two to six of your other tickets, each a day ticket, a timed entry or a session, at any of the venues on your account. It has its own price per guest type and no capacity of its own: its places are its parts' places. All parts are on one day, and the guest picks a time for each part that has times.

Some things cannot be parts: a rental, another combo, a ticket with reserved seats, or a ticket with an inner timed entry (a special exhibition slot inside a day ticket). Every part must sell every guest type the combo sells; a combo with a child price and a part with no child ticket is refused, naming the part.

A combo joins venues you run on one account. A combo between two separate businesses, each on its own account, is not built.

How does each venue's gate check its own part?

When a combo is booked, each part gets its own tickets, one per guest. Each ticket's code is signed with the key of the venue that part belongs to and names that venue. A gate phone checks codes against its own venue's keys and answers "Not for this venue" to any other, online and offline alike, because the signature is checked on the phone (see offline ticket scanning).

So the museum's gate scans the museum tickets and turns away the cruise tickets, and the pier does the reverse. The guest's ticket page names each ticket's product and, for a part at another venue, says "Show it at" that venue. Each part's tickets fall under its own venue's waivers, and each carries whatever that part's own ticket includes.

Holding places: all or nothing

The calendar shows a day only when every part offers it, at the fewest places any part has, with a timed part taken at its best entry and each part judged on its own venue's day. If the museum has 40 places left and the cruise has 6, the combo shows 6.

Booking holds a place on every part in one hold. If one part is full at the chosen time, nothing is held and the guest is told which part ("Cruise has no place left at that time"). Where a part has several times and none was picked, the guest is asked to choose one. The combo is sold in the shop, in the basket with other tickets, and at the box office. How each part's own slots are sized is covered in timed-entry slot capacity.

Moving, naming and cancelling as one

Moving. The box office, or a guest changing inside your own change policy, moves the combo as one entry. Every part moves in one transaction: if any part has no room on the new day or time, nothing moves. If you have changed the combo's parts since the sale, a move is refused in plain words. The venue can cancel it and sell it again.

Naming. The ticket page, the tickets email and the orders list name the combo once and count it once. The desk's order view shows "Part of" the combo against each ticket.

Cancelling. A cancellation gives back every part's places together. A refund follows the cancellation policy you set, like any order.

When is a pass with inclusions the better tool?

A combo is several tickets on one day. Selling many things at one venue on one ticket is a different job, done with what a ticket includes:

• Points are your own places where something is used: a ride, an exhibition, a show, a food counter, a fast-track lane, an area. You name them on the venue's page when you need them; a ticket that includes nothing sells without any.
• What a ticket includes is a list of point, uses (1 to 99, or as often as they like) and per (the visit, or each day of a multi-day pass).
• Choose N of M marks rows as choices: any 3 of 8 rides, each once.
• Valid from the first scan: N days (2 to 60) or N hours (1 to 240) from the first scan anywhere at the venue. A day ticket can also be open-dated: bought now, first used any day within your window.
• An inner timed entry takes its times and places from a timed ticket at the same venue, so the special exhibition sold alone and inside day tickets shares one pool.

A gate phone stationed at a point uses one of what the ticket includes there and answers "Go ahead" with what is left, "None left here", "Not included", or "Just used here" for a second scan within two minutes. Two offline phones that together let a ticket past its allowance are recorded, never refused, and Today lists the overuse. What a ticket includes is frozen when it is sold.

Splitting the money between parts

Each part has a share of the combo's price, split evenly unless you give every share, in which case they must make 100%. When a combo sells, it writes one order line per part and guest type at that part's share. The last part takes any rounding, so the lines always add up to the combo price exactly.

Because the lines belong to the parts, every report's revenue per ticket is the parts' own. Reports → Sales also has a Combos table showing guests and money per combo, with a CSV export. The same money also appears under its parts, so never add the two tables together. The guest pays once for the whole order.

What the code does not do is pay anyone out. If two of your venues have different owners or budgets, how money moves between them is a settlement they agree. The shares are the record they settle from, so set the shares to what was agreed before the first sale.

A worked example: museum and harbour cruise

Illustrative numbers. Your city museum sells timed entry every hour from 09:00; your harbour cruise, a session operation with its crew and boat planned like any activity, runs at 10:00 and 14:00. You make a combo at 100 an adult and 50 a child, shares 40% museum and 60% cruise.

A family of two adults and a child books 3 November, the museum at 09:00 and the cruise at 14:00, and pays 250.

Sales by ticket shows the museum 100 and the cruise 150. The Combos table shows one sale, 3 guests, 250. At the museum gate the three cruise tickets are "Not for this venue"; at the pier, the reverse.

The family asks to move to 4 November. The 14:00 cruise that day is full, so the move is refused and nothing changes, not even the museum. They pick the 10:00 cruise and the museum at 13:00 instead, and both parts move together.

Now a price that does not divide: an adult combo at 99.99 with shares of 40 and 60. The museum line takes 39.99 and the cruise, as the last part, takes 60.00. Together that is exactly 99.99.

Checklist before you sell a combo

• Agree the shares with whoever runs each venue, in writing, before the first sale.
• Check every part sells every guest type the combo will price.
• Decide the combo's prices against the parts bought separately.
• Check each part's times fit together on the same day, including travel between venues.
• Write the change and cancel terms, knowing the combo moves and cancels as one.
• Brief each gate that a combo arrives as separate tickets, and that "Not for this venue" means the guest is at the wrong door.
• Choose combo or pass for each idea, with the table above.
• Sell one to yourself, scan each part at its own gate, move it, and read Reports → Sales.