Guests want to curate their entire day during the digital checkout flow.
The days of visitors blindly purchasing a standard general admission ticket are rapidly ending. Modern consumers expect to build their own itineraries, like pairing a morning entrance ticket with an exclusive VIP animal encounter or a pre-booked dining spot in a single order.
An Amadeus report confirms this shift, revealing that 99 percent of travelers find personalised experience options useful. As Jay Richmond, Vice President at Amadeus, highlights in the same report, the true promise of personalisation lies in building a specifically tailored package around what the guest wants. He states, "The promise of personalisation is creating unique, relevant offers for travelers. We are building a specifically tailored package around you".
Historically, securing a general admission ticket was the final step for venue operators. Marketing stopped once gate entry was confirmed, not because operators lacked vision, but because legacy booking technology simply could not handle complex schedule linking. Today, the new benchmark for profitability is securing secondary spend digitally, turning a simple ticket purchase into a high value, multi item transaction.
Capitalising on Checkout Anticipation
Packaging works because it taps directly into the excitement of planning a trip. When visitors enter your checkout flow, they are actively curating an experience. Amadeus data shows that 74 percent of travelers use digital channels during the planning phase to map out their full day.
Offering targeted bundles at this exact moment captures spend that would otherwise go to off site competitors. It also satisfies consumer demand for convenience, as 65 percent of travelers prefer completing their booking, add ons, and payment in one single transaction. In fact, the Amadeus study also reveals that 67 percent of travelers are more likely to choose a provider that lets them manage their full journey in one place.
Beyond increasing average order value, digital packages solve two major operational challenges. First, they eliminate in venue friction, capturing food and upgrade spend digitally before guests arrive so you never lose sales to long physical queues. Second, they provide a powerful tool for off peak yield management, allowing operators to launch special winter offers or seasonal bundles that drive steady traffic when visitor counts drop.
How the Heavyweights Build Their Bundles
You don't have to look far to see this strategy in action. Major Australian venues have moved away from the one-size-fits-all ticket model by offering highly structured, all-in-one experiences.
Take Village Roadshow Theme Parks, for example. Rather than just pushing a standard day pass, they successfully bundle multi-day entry with pre-paid dining vouchers and fast-track ride access. By doing this, they secure the visitor's food and beverage budget weeks before the family even steps foot on the Gold Coast.
Similarly, iconic landmarks like the Sydney Tower Eye no longer rely solely on basic observation deck admission. Instead, they promote tiered packages that pair entry with the VIP Skywalk and digital photo bundles, significantly raising the basket size of a single transaction.
Automating the Upsell: Introducing Packages
The catch is that executing a flawless bundling strategy is traditionally an operational nightmare. If you bundle a morning tour with an afternoon VIP session, trying to manually manage availability across two different calendars usually leads to double-bookings and stressed staff.
To solve this, we are thrilled to announce our new Packages feature.
Designed to increase your average order value effortlessly, Packages lets you combine existing offerings into a single, bookable experience without having to create new inventory from scratch. Behind the scenes, the booking engine syncs your separate calendars, allowing you to build two distinct types of bundles:
- Signature Experiences: Pair your main admission with standalone extras—like an afternoon VIP tour. Because the schedules are synced in real time, if that VIP tour sells out on its own, the package automatically closes out too. You never have to update two separate calendars.
- Multi-Part Journeys: Build consecutive itineraries such as a multi-stop cruise or a hop-on/hop-off bus tour. The guest buys the main package in one click, and the system automatically reserves their spot across every scheduled time slot, ensuring they seamlessly follow the exact journey you designed.
The best part? The guest purchases the entire bundle in one frictionless transaction.
Because venues rely on multiple distribution streams, these packages sync directly through to connected OTA channels. If a date closes out locally on your website, it closes out everywhere it is sold.
By taking manual calendar management out of the equation, your team can focus entirely on delivering incredible guest experiences.
Looking for more ways to future proof your attraction? Check out our recent article, How AI Trip Planning is Rewriting the Rules of Regional Tourism, to learn exactly how to make your venue visible to the next generation of AI travel tools.
If you're evaluating ticketing platforms for your site we're happy to talk through what to ask vendors, including us.
