Why pre-orders aren’t a ticketing or cashless feature
It can seem logical to sell pre-orders through a ticketing or cashless platform. Both already handle transactions at festivals, and in many cases they already know who the customer is. But the problem is that pre-orders happen at a different point in the customer journey, and the products themselves often require very different workflows.
Tickets are typically sold months before an event. At that point, the customer is deciding whether to go to the festival. They are not necessarily thinking about which camping equipment they need, whether to rent a locker or powerbank, what merchandise they want, or which food and drink products they might buy. Those decisions happen later, and festivals have many opportunities to reach customers again through their website, app, email, social media and supplier campaigns.
This is where putting pre-orders inside a ticketing platform can become limiting. If someone sees a camping product in an email or in the festival app, the ideal journey is to take them directly to that product. Sending them back into a ticketing environment, potentially behind an account or an old ticket order, adds friction to a purchase that has little to do with buying a ticket. It also means the festival is relying on the ticketing platform as the main entry point for products that may be promoted across many different channels.
Cashless platforms have a similar problem, but for a different reason. Their main job is normally to handle payments at the event. Customers use them to register or connect a wristband, access an account, top up funds and manage their balance. Pre-orders can be added to that setup, but they often sit behind a flow designed for something else. A customer who simply wants to buy a tent, chair or drinks package can end up having to enter the cashless environment before they even reach the product. From our conversations with festivals using cashless systems for pre-orders, we see that sales are typically much lower than what we see when pre-orders are given their own storefront and direct entry points.
There is also an operational difference. A tent rental with a deposit isn’t just another type of ticket. Neither is a powerbank, locker, case of beer or piece of merchandise. These products can involve inventory, suppliers, pickup locations, deposits, returns and different fulfilment processes. As festivals expand what they sell before the event, they increasingly need e-commerce infrastructure rather than another ticket type.
That doesn’t mean ticketing, cashless and pre-orders should operate separately. Preo is built to connect with the systems a festival already uses. Orders can be imported from ticketing platforms, APIs can exchange data between systems, and Preo can be integrated into festival websites and apps. The operational side can therefore stay connected without forcing every sale through the same customer journey.
The important part is giving each system the job it is good at. Ticketing sells access to the event. Cashless handles on-site payments. Preo gives festivals a dedicated place to sell everything else before and during the event.
