A couple of weeks ago, I wanted to book a ticket for the Hollywood movie “The Departed” playing at the INOX multiplex theater (in Pune, India, which is where I currently live). Out of the various ticket booking options, I selected the Internet online option that was advertised prominently in the newspaper. When I visited the advertised URL www.inoxmovies.com, I was surprised to note that online booking was not available!
Having decided earlier that I didn’t want to visit the theater once to book tickets and once again later in the same day to see the movie, I checked if any other remote booking options were available. Fortunately, the website listed SMS ticket booking via mobile phone as another option. I decided to try this out.
The first thing I noticed on the website was that this process demanded very rigid syntax in which the SMS messages should be composed. Anyway, once I got past that stage, and after a couple of SMS messages went back-and-forth between INOX and me, I got the following message stating that there were only 3 tickets available for the 17:55 show that I was interested in.
I hurriedly replied to this message to ensure that I got one of these three available tickets.
In return, I received the following confirmation message for my ticket booking.
I was happy to book the ticket without leaving the comfort of my home. But, because the ticketing process did not call for any payment, it was quite obvious that my ticket was not guaranteed. Since I was eager to see the movie and had managed to get one of the last few tickets, I didn’t want to miss out by reaching late. Therefore, as per the warning given in the confirmation message, I reached the theater one hour before the show time to pay for and collect the ticket, lest my booking got cancelled.
When I reached the box office and showed my mobile phone to the booking agent, he was least interested in seeing the confirmation number given in the confirmation message. Instead, he asked me the same questions he’d have normally asked any other walk-in customer: which movie? which show? how many tickets?. When I gave him these answers and the money, he gave me my ticket.
I was curious: with only three seats remaining when I’d made my SMS booking a few hours earlier, how come the box office agent was so nonchalant about issuing me a ticket without verifying that I was the holder of a legitimate booking?
I got my answer a few minutes later, when I found that the hall was half-empty!
I didn’t understand the whole point behind the SMS ticket booking process. To me, it seemed as though it was completely disconnected from the regular box office ticketing process. Either that, or their box office staff is un-trained about SMS ticketing and doesn’t know what to do when they come across a customer who has used it for booking a ticket.
Was I just plain lucky that the show wasn’t sold out? Was that how I could manage to get a seat? What would’ve happened if the show had been sold out? Would the box office have honored my SMS booking? These are questions that came to my mind immediately after this experience.
Lately, I’ve heard that there are more advanced mobile phone based ticketing technologies — e.g.Tagit (www.tagit.tv) — that allow you to select not just the theater and the movie but also the show time and your seat number, then make the payment and receive a confirmed ticket, all on your mobile phone. I just hope that multiplexes implementing such technologies make sure
- that they are tightly integrated with their existing box office ticketing systems, and
- that their staff are adequately trained on such new technologies
so that they honor such tickets in the same manner they would honor conventional tickets bought from their box offices.