Fringe set to dump ticket system after week of chaos

FRINGE Festival chiefs are preparing to dump their new computerised ticket booking system as the chaos which brought the box office to a halt continues.

Organisers will reinstate their old booking system in the event that their new £335,000 software fails to go online over the weekend.

Tickets for the festival were supposed to go on sale last Monday but almost as soon as the box office, telesales and online booking systems were booted-up the whole system crashed.

Face-to-face bookings ground to halt – with some transactions taking up to two hours to process – and long queues formed outside the High Street booking office.

Telephone and online sales failed to get off the ground altogether so the decision was taken to take the whole system of offline. Repeated assurances that the system would be fully operational throughout last week failed to materialise. The organisers are now implementing a back-up plan where the old booking system, which was itself beset by problems and described as "no longer fit for purpose", will be brought back online.

Fringe director Jon Morgan said: "We are continuing to do everything we can to get the box office system working.

"We are going to work over the weekend on an alternative web-based system. We are keeping all artists and venues informed and we are offering details of other ticketing outlets on our website.

"We are at the beginning of a three-year development programme to create a system that will meet the future challenges of selling tickets for the Fringe. The projected cost of the project is £335,000 over the next three years.

"We are committed to developing a system that will stand the test of time and deal effectively with sales for over 31,000 performances every year."

The Fringe is testing out a new box office system this year called Liquid Box Office – designed by Glasgow-based Pivotal Integration Ltd.

A version of this system was tested at the Brighton Arts Festival last year and things did not always run smoothly, with Fringe organisers admitting that there were "some problems" with the Brighton run last year.

Pivotal Director David Stapleton put the problems down to "a combination of circumstances".

He added: "We are working round the clock with the Fringe to resolve all issues and restore ticket sales as soon as possible.

"We applied two short-term fixes to the system on Wednesday and Thursday and we believed them to be sufficient for sales across all channels.

"Unfortunately after further testing we concluded it would be sensible to delay sales."