Marlborough Wine And Cuisine Tickets Go On Sale Tomorrow

PRESS RELEASE

31 May 2011

One Hundred Days To Go - Marlborough Wine And Cuisine Tickets Go On Sale Tomorrow

Tomorrow, on Wednesday 1st June 2011 it will be 100 days until the Rugby World Cup hits New Zealand. To celebrate, Wine Marlborough Ltd will be launching ticket sales for its unique Marlborough Wine and Cuisine event to be held at Brancott Vineyard on Thursday 6 October 2011.

This event has been created by Wine Marlborough Ltd, organisers of the long established Marlborough Wine Festival, and organisers hope the event will appeal to the 66% of Rugby World Cup visitors to New Zealand seeking a wine and food experience. Event organisers hope to sell around 4,000 tickets to this event.

To sell the NZD$55 tickets to its event Wine Marlborough will be using a new card ticketing concept supplied by 1-night.co.nz - a unique online paperless ticketing solution and New Zealand's only card based ticketing platform.

Each card is personalised with the ticket purchaser's name and account number. The new system also offers the benefit of eliminating the issues associated with lost, stolen and counterfeit cards. If the ticket is lost or stolen, the account attached to the card is simply cancelled. All cards are scanned at the entrance to the event.

Coupled with this is a revolutionary iPhone application which allows people to purchase tickets using their iPhone. The iPhone app scans the quick-reference code on a poster, flyer or advert and the ticket page is loaded automatically. The ticket can then be scanned from the iPhone for entry into the 6 October event.

According to co-founder of 1-night Ash Fogelberg 1-night's iPhone application is highly innovative. "We are at the leading edge of what can be done," said Mr Fogelberg. "The enabling technology has been made available in the last year or two, and these types of Barcodes are popular in iPhone applications in Korea and China."

Wine Marlborough's Event Manager Andrea Craig is excited about the new ticketing solution and sees its potential for the organisation's events longer term. "We are running an international event with Marlborough Wine and Cuisine, and we felt that using an innovative ticketing system that international audiences were comfortable using, would add to this event's professionalism and appeal."

This solution also helps Wine Marlborough to address issues with selling tickets to a largely international target audience. "Using this system, someone can purchase a ticket from anywhere in the world and straight away they either have an email ticket or an iPhone ticket which they can bring with them to the event," says Craig, "and the card tickets are either posted within New Zealand or can be collected from agreed pick up points."

Craig says that choosing a ticketing solution is an important part of the event planning process, but there were clear reasons for selecting 1-night's platform. "Once a ticket is purchased the card will go straight into someone's wallet - it becomes a form of branding for Wine Marlborough where every time someone opens their wallet they are reminded of our event," says Craig "and by using the card ticket and bar code platforms we are also able to spread our ticket sales strategy further."

Tickets will be sold through many outlets including Marlborough wineries and Cellar Doors, and using the local wine industry's network of websites and social media to distribute the bar code. "The ticketing approach is new for us but it is market leading and that's where Wine Marlborough wants to be with its events," says Craig.

ENDS

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