National Trust
National Trust

Employing 10,000 people and supported by more than 50,000 volunteers and 5 million members, in excess of 20 million people enjoy visiting National Trust properties annually. With the majority of visits being booked online the National Trust needed a proven, resilient and innovative solution to efficiently manage visitor numbers, whilst providing a world-class customer experience both during and after the global pandemic.

A shift to online sales

With COVID-19 adjusting booking habits throughout the industry, The National Trust was looking for a robust ticketing system to allow them to manage an unprecedented increase in online sales, as well as allowing them to continue providing a first-class experience for customers buying tickets on the door. With the Trust receiving up to 15 million online bookings every year the new solution needed to be reliable above all else, giving customers a consistently positive booking flow and making it as easy as possible for them to access the incredible venues on offer.

Following a rigorous tender process, we were delighted to be selected as the successful supplier and immediately set to work creating the best possible solution.

A planned approach

The first stage of the project involved extensive scoping by both teams. By documenting the requirements in detail, our Business Development and Project Management Teams formulated a dedicated internal working group to effectively deliver the project. 

The key to a successful rollout was a thorough approach that was carefully managed. With hundreds of sites and operational teams, the aim was to keep everything as uniform as possible, ensuring there was no confusion. The rollout was to be broken into stages in order to make it more manageable for the National Trust Team. 

Branch by branch

Due to the size and security needed for the scale of the project, The National Trust was also given its own dedicated instance of the DigiTickets platform along with a custom domain, to ensure that its impressive ticket volumes didn't impact other clients.

In order to maintain the overarching brand of National Trust, we employed the branches feature to keep all sites tied together while still allowing the different venues to manage their tickets separately. Each site was able to customise its branch as needed, while still carrying through the iconic Trust branding.

As a result, The National Trust are now able to use the DigiTicket Back Office to pull specific reports based on branches as well as making branch-specific edits. By using DigiTickets to manage all their locations, the National Trust are able to keep everything in one easily manageable place.

Live and selling

With the ticketing now fully operational we're delighted to continue working with the National Trust to help them to meet their goals and to enhance the customer journey going forwards. With exceptionally positive feedback so far, we're confident that our partnership will continue to produce fantastic results, allowing up to keep improving and growing together.

Here's what the National Trust had to say...

The IT Project Lead at National Trust commented:

"Deploying an upgraded ticketing solution has been a critical project for us during these unprecedented times.  The solution needed to balance the needs of our visitors, our property operations teams, and the National Trust management team.  A key requirement was a partner that could manage our booking volumes; we needed a solution that could cater for 60,000 concurrent users, process 15 million bookings per year, and manage 130,000 bookable time slots per week in real-time.  We’re delighted to say that the project has been a success and we’re looking forward to a continued relationship with DigiTickets."

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