IAAPA, Cygnus and the iPhone of Ticketing

Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 25th of Nov, 2007 02:41:18 PM

IAAPA is no ordinary expo. This year over 27,000 people attended, not only because it’s the attraction industry’s largest annual event, but because it’s hella fun! After all, the 1,000 exhibitors trying to sell their products by showing you how fun they are. Check out the pics:

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Yup, that’sme in that crazy inflatable futuristic sumo suit—right before I got taken down hardcore by my fifteen year-old opponent!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I definitely need to bring a real camera next time instead of relying on my alleged 3 megapixel camera on my phone (no way this is even 1 megapixel!). Anyway, in addition to having the hottest models of any exhibitor, Sega showcased their 3-D Theater which really rocked!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahh yes, the reason for me attending the expo in the first place—Cygnus (Other OTC: CYGT.PK) was debuting their new ticketing platform aka my only hope at salvaging my “investment” in them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a word: incredible.

 

Not only did I get a chance to have a long chat with their new CEO—Steve Brown, a somewhat confident yet conservative man—but I got to see how excited everyone—and I do mean everyone: Six Flags, Hershey, assorted zoo and museum directors—was about this new software. As Steve Brown says, “it’s the iPhone of ticketing”.

 

To give you a little background, Cygnus has always had an amazing online ticketing platform—how else could this tiny company win the contracts to handle the entire online ticketing operations of industry leaders like Six Flags, Universal Studios, Hershey Park and Cedar Fair—but they never had a front-gate solution and this lack of a comprehensive package hurt them when bidding on contracts.

 

 

Long story short, this new platform handles everything: online, front gate, kiosk, mobile (now through a deal with Shoptext, Cygnus sells tickets by text messages). It’s a clean-looking feature-rich checkout platform that should really win everyone over, attractions and consumers alike. Attraction execs love it because it upsells customers with add-ons (decreasing the need for expensive-to-train seasonal employees and not unlike companies that have had massive success with this: Vistaprint (Nasdaq: VPRT) and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN). Think, you’re buying 3 day passes and the software asks you if you’d like to upgrade to 3 season passes for $25 more.

 

Perhaps more importantly, no longer will consumers have to keep navigating back to their shopping cart page—now, after an attraction (or dare I say any company) inserts a few lines of code into their website, the shopping cart will appear on the right hand side of every page. This simple innovation could be huge for ticketing sales.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, yeah, I’m excited. Maybe even moreso because the new CEO seems deadest on cutting costs, controlling expenses and growing this company only after this new platform has been tested extensively and all the bugs worked out. It’s going to be a long journey, but I’m encouraged by news that they will be handling all the ticketing for the Columbus Zoo (while it’s just a stupid zoo, like the animals they house, these zoos move in herds, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see further customer wins). Of course, the stock probly won’t benefit unless they start getting a lot of small contracts or one big one. Financing definitely wouldn’t hurt either!

Warning: Timothy Sykes and the Easter Bunny have positions in CYGT.

 

Now you can Twitter any questions/comments to TIMhelp and obviously you can follow TIM on twitter too!

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