Sureseats.com: Texting for tickets

On the way home from office, you discover that a movie you’ve been meaning to watch is showing within the hour. One more text and you’ll have a ticket reserved for you at the cinema – no need to waste time queuing for it or agonizing whether you’ll make the screening or not.

Or you could be a busy housewife. You decide to take a break by going to the cinema. Instead of buying a newspaper to check the list of the latest movies,you grab your cellphone and get the information hassle-free.

These are just a few examples of what mobile commerce can do to make a commonplace practice such as going to the movies more convenient. With a simple text message, moviegoers can save themselves the trouble of lining up for tickets at the box office. Sureseats.com is taking advantage of the texting boom by introducing ticket reservations through cellphones. The new service is the brainchild of Globe Telecom and myAyala, in cooperation with Ayala Theaters Management Inc.

"Texting can be more powerful than the Internet because you get information and service anytime and anywhere," says Pom Figueroa, technical head of myAyala. Figueroa leads the team that developed the texting facility of Sureseats.com.

Now texters can be assured of cinema seats hours in advance by typing sureseats <theater name> <cinema number> <screening time> <number of tickets> and sending the message to 2333. For example, you can save two tickets for the 6:20 p.m. screening at Glorietta 4, Cinema 3 by typing sureseats G4 3 6:20 pm 2. The service only costs P2 for post-paid and 2.50 for pre-paid; a maximum of six tickets can be reserved per text. Sureseats.com then returns a confirmation text that the sender should display when picking up the tickets at the cinema.

But what if you don’t know what movies are being screened or at what times? Figueroa explains that you can simply reduce the keywords from the above text message. To receive a list of movies showing at Glorietta 4 Cinema 1, send sureseats G4. To get the screening hours of the movie at Glorietta 4 Cinema 1, send sureseats G4 1. In a few seconds, the system sends you the information that you need before making a reservation.

"By offering moviegoers the option of reserving tickets in advance, we are giving them a stress-free movie experience," says Figueroa. Anyone who has been held up in line at the movies may even consider the P10 reservation fee per ticket a small price to pay for the convenience.

Launched earlier this year, the Sureseats.com website lets moviegoers view the schedules of films screened in Ayala theaters and reserve tickets through the Internet. The website is a project of my Ayala.com, a joint venture between Ayala Land, Inc., the country’s premier property developer, and iAyala Co. Inc., the information technology arm of Ayala Corporation.

Visitors to Sureseats.com only need to click on a theater to know the movies schedules. They can indicate how many tickets they would like to get for particular screening hours in their cinema of choice. They are also given the option to specify where they want to be seated in cinemas with guaranteed seating. After this, they need to print Sureseats.com has a separate ticketing booth where they can pick up and pay for the reserved movie tickets in minutes.

For now, the service covers theaters in Ayala Center, Greenbelt, and Alabang Town Center. But Figueroa reveals plans to make the service available for more cinemas and events such as plays and concerts in other venues.

With all these conveniences, Figueroa notes that myAyala is still developing ways to enhance the ticketing software that runs Sureseats.com. For one, his technical team is considering how to allow patrons to actually purchase tickets online and through text – and not just reserve for them. Then there are other details to consider such as making sure that the ticket buyer is of the right age for rated films and eliminating problems with double seating.

Figueroa discloses that myAyala wants to make the ticketing software at par with world-class standards: "We are developing this as a Filipino-made ticketing software that can compete with similar software from Singapore, Taiwan, or Japan." He hopes that the enhanced Sureseats.com will be up and running by the first quarter of 2002.

There may be reason for alacrity. All told, Sureseats.com gets around 400 ticket reservations a day through the Web and mobile phones. Figueroa believes that as word about Sureseats.com spreads in the texting community – and it inevitably does – more people will avail of the service. Both wired and wireless, Sureseats.com is still another reason to go to the movies.