An annual pass for your museum: reward your regulars

Every museum has them: the retired teacher who comes back for every new exhibition, the grandparents who walk the permanent collection with the grandchildren on Wednesdays, the neighbour who just likes to sit in the garden for an hour. They pay full price every time, or they carry a paper friends card nobody can tell is still valid. An annual pass fixes that: pay once, come in all year, and you finally know how often your regulars really visit. This article explains how to set up and sell an annual pass for your museum, exhibition or garden.

How an annual pass differs from a ticket

A ticket is valid for one day or one time slot and is used up after one scan. An annual pass is valid for a period, is always in someone's name, and is scanned again on every visit. In Passavo, Season pass is a product type; to your visitors you call it whatever they know: friends card, membership or annual pass. For more on the concept, see season pass.

What should it cost? A worked example

Take a city museum that charges 12 euros for adults and 6 euros for children and changes exhibitions three times a year.

• An adult annual pass at 30 euros pays off from the third visit. Anyone who comes to every exhibition is already ahead.
• A child pass at 15 euros follows the same logic.
• Each rate is a separate product, with its own price and its own name on the pass. A family buys two adult passes and two child passes, each with the holder's name.

After a year, the visit count tells you whether that price works. Sell 200 passes that are scanned 900 times between them and the average holder comes four or five times: the pass is doing its job. If the same 200 passes are used only 250 times, the pass is too expensive or the programme too thin.

Setting up the pass in five steps

1. Go to Products and click New product.
2. Under Type, choose Season pass and give it the name your visitors know, for example Friends card adult. Set the price.
3. Leave Valid in months empty for twelve months. The term runs from the day of sale: someone who buys in November also gets a full year.
4. Leave Visits per day empty. Empty means one visit a day, which is the safe choice for a museum: a pass that lets someone in twice on the same day gets handed back over the barrier. For a garden where people pop out for a sandwich, set it to two, or to zero for unlimited.
5. Turn on Name on the ticket, so a buyer who orders three passes enters three names.

Online and at the desk

Online, the pass simply sits among your tickets. At checkout the buyer enters the holder's name for each pass. After paying, they get a QR code and a button for Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. The wallet version is a generic pass rather than an event ticket, so it stays at the front of the phone all year.

At the box office till you ring up the pass like any other product. The till asks for the visitor's name first and only then takes payment. Passes sold online and at the desk end up in the same Season passes overview.

At the entrance

Your staff scan the pass with the same scanner app as the tickets. A valid pass shows Admit and counts a visit. If the pass has already been in today, the app shows Already scanned; if it has expired or hasn't started yet, Wrong day. Passavo records the date and time of every visit, so each pass shows how often its holder came.

A busy exhibition with time slots

An annual pass gets someone through the door, but it doesn't count towards the capacity of a time slot. If a big exhibition runs on time slots, create a free ticket for pass holders that they use to book a place in a slot. That way you know how many people will really be in the gallery at 2 pm, even if half of them come on a pass.

A new exhibition? One message to every holder

When a new exhibition opens, send one short message through Messages to visitors to the audience All season pass holders. Holders with the pass in their wallet get it as a notification on their phone; those without a wallet pass get an email, unless they unsubscribed. Cancelled or expired passes are left out automatically. More in Messages to visitors.

After a year: renewing

In the Season passes overview, the Expiring soon filter shows the passes that end within thirty days: that's your renewal list. Open a pass and you see how often the holder came. "You visited us eleven times this year" is more persuasive than a generic reminder.

Most holders simply buy a new pass in the ticket shop. For someone renewing at the desk, use the Renew button: it creates a new pass that follows on from the old one, with a new code. Last year's visits stay with the old pass, so you get an honest figure for each year. A pass for an honorary member or a prize winner can be issued by hand with Issue a season pass.

What it costs

Season passes are included in Growth, at €29.00 a month, with no charge per pass sold, along with gift vouchers and your own domain for your ticket shop. Every setting is in the guide to Season passes, the pricing page shows what each plan includes, and there's more on Passavo for museums and attractions under visitor attractions.