Is Fandango’s online movie ticket purchasing service about send paper movie tickets to the “extinct” pile with the wider release of their mobile ticket service? While it’s perhaps a little early to sound the death knell for the paper ticket industry, Fandango’s expansion of their online/mobile ticket program is a step in the right direction.
To facilitate the mobile movie tickets, Fandango is, of course, making use of QR codes, which are downloaded to your mobile device of choice and then scanned by the ticket-taker. While the service has been available for close to two years, Fandango’s most recent announcement discussed the expansion of the program with more Regal movie theaters participating in the process. The expanded service is rolling out just in time for the next installment of the Twilight “saga,” and considering the total amount of theaters showing the new Twilight movie, the two go hand-in-hand.
After reading one of the provided quotes from Fandango’s press release, it’s easy to think the new Twilight movie is the reason the service expanded to begin with. Clearly, the powers that be at Fandango wanted their expanded service to coincide with a major release, and with the new Twilight representing one of the biggest theatrical releases outside of the summer films, the timing of the announcement makes sense:
“Mobile Ticket will be in high demand tonight, helping ‘Twilight’ fans get into the movie theater faster than ever,” says Rick Butler, EVP and General Manager of Fandango, “and it promises to be one of our most popular conveniences at Regal’s theaters. Regal Entertainment Group has been an innovative partner since Fandango’s very beginnings in 2000, as the company regularly looks for new ways to enhance the moviegoing experience for its customers.”
Of course, if the mobile ticket service expansion had been delayed until next summer, you would need to replace Twilight with either the new Dark Knight or the new Spider-Man movie.
The press release also reveals the expanded mobile ticket service will work for all carriers, and that you don’t have to have a smart phone to access it. Furthermore, there will be no convenience fee attached to it.
Because the Regal movie theaters are the target for the expanded use of Fandango’s mobile movie ticket service, the Regal site has a list of all the theaters that will honor Fandango’s QR codes. Major cities like New York, LA and Chicago are on the list, as are cities like Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; and Honolulu, Hawaii. Regal Cinemas in San Francisco, San Diego, Denver, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle also support the expanded service as well.
With that in mind, do you see the way in which you purchase movie tickets changing, or does the fact that a QR code doesn’t produce a ticket stub you can keep make you shy away from mobile movie tickets? Let us know what you think.
