How to create VIP ticket packages?

[Rob]

Is there a way with Event Tickets Plus to create a set of VIP ticket packages?

We have two packages we want to sell that are for a community film festival. At the festival are several bus tours, meals, concerts, lectures, movie showings, and other events we want to encapsulate into a single WooCommerce product.

It would be awesome if there were a way to make it so that each time someone purchases a VIP package, the ticket count for each of the events would decrement by one.

Is there a way of doing this?

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Rob and welcome back!

Thank you for reaching out to us.
I would love to help you with this topic.

It would be awesome if there were a way to make it so that each time someone purchases a VIP package, the ticket count for each of the events would decrement by one. Is there a way of doing this?

One way you could accomplish this is to have 2 types of tickets for an event (VIP and non-VIP), each with it’s own price.

Once the 2 tickets are set up for your event, you can take advantage of our fairly new “Enable global stock” option.

That way the global stock will be reduced, no matter what type of ticket is bought.

Let me know if that would work for you.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Rob]

Thanks. I do have another question. Once I create a VIP ticket, is there a way to hide it from the event ticket view? This sounds weird, but we don’t want people purchasing VIP tickets a la carte. We are putting all VIP tickets into two packages. We want the VIP tickets to still be separate and accounted for separately so we know how many of those types of tickets sold vs. the lower-priced ones. We just don’t want people browsing the site to buy them up a la carte and therefore ruin the ticket counts for the packages. Make sense?

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Rob,

You have a pretty specific idea in mind (which is awesome).

But just to make sure we are on the same page, would you mind sharing a screenshot of what you consider being the event ticket view ?

If I understand correctly what you are trying to do, you either:

1. Want to be able to sell VIP tickets “manually” without the public knowing they exist ?
2. Are concerned is that somebody scouring the website might accidentally find the ticket product on it’s own and thus offset the global stock ?

1) You could simply hide the VIP product via CSS. Ideally, if you could set a dummy event in place (far in the future for example), I could provide you with the correct CSS.

2) That part is actually pretty safe, by default a ticket is set to not be viewable. If you are instead using a simple or variable WooCommerce product, you could also control it’s visibility directly in the product itself.

Finally, some of our customers have done some template customizations that could probably help you achieve what you are looking for (provided I understood what you are trying to do correctly).

You might want to read the following: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/selling-tickets-from-the-woocommerce-products-page/

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Rob]

Thanks for your insights.

I decided I just needed to build a package to get a feel for what I’m trying to do.

Attached is a screenshot of where I am currently by using the built-in Variable Product type (this is a preview of a draft, not available to look at on our public site). However, there are a few problems with this approach that I didn’t foresee until I actually set it up

1) The price shows as $0.00 – $330.00. We can’t have that show like this because it gives the false impression that there’s a free variation.

2) The drop downs to select two of four lecture options don’t actually have any effect on the stock management of the tickets available for the lectures. In other words, the dropdowns aren’t linked to any product. They’re just static for the purpose of letting our administration team know that these are the lectures the person chose for their package. They’ll have to go into WordPress and manually purchase those tickets on behalf of that customer so that the customer will have a ticket for the event (probably via Will Call because the fulfillment would also be detached from a package purchase.

3) Just adding the lectures as variations resulted in 16 combinations, three of which I eliminated because they were combinations of the same lecture. When I add the bus tour selections as variations, well, you can see how quickly that will become unmanageable in the product.

Ugh.

So I did some more searching around and found this article:

https://docs.woothemes.com/document/chained-products-vs-product-bundles-vs-force-sells-vs-grouped-products/

which led me to this plugin

https://www.woothemes.com/products/product-bundles/

Specifically, it looks like what I might be able to do is bundle products (like the t-shirt and souvenir pin) with events (like the concerts, meals, tours, and lectures).

I don’t want to buy a plugin just to find out it won’t address my needs. So, I’m hoping you or someone who knows about this plugin can shed more light on whether that product bundles plugin would support what I’m attempting to do.

Thanks

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Rob,

Good work on getting a proof of concept down.

Just to set expectations, as you might know, the scope of our support is mostly to get our customers started on the right track and to help them in case of issues. We unfortunately do not provide complete support for customization.

With that in mind, here are some answers to help out:

1) The price shows as $0.00 – $330.00. We can’t have that show like this because it gives the false impression that there’s a free variation.

Actually you could hide or modify the price range if you wanted to (through a function or some CSS). But provided you have not chosen this option, let’s not spend too much time on it.

2) The drop downs to select two of four lecture options don’t actually have any effect on the stock management of the tickets available for the lectures. In other words, the dropdowns aren’t linked to any product. They’re just static for the purpose of letting our administration team know that these are the lectures the person chose for their package. They’ll have to go into WordPress and manually purchase those tickets on behalf of that customer so that the customer will have a ticket for the event (probably via Will Call because the fulfillment would also be detached from a package purchase.

You are right. Built-in, by their very nature, the ticket products do not provide complex stock interactions with other variables.

It is probably possible to achieve, but that would require some customization.

If you haven’t already, you could probably read our Themer’s guide to get a general sense of how that works.
As an alternative, you could hire one of our recommended customizers to do the customization for you.

3) Just adding the lectures as variations resulted in 16 combinations, three of which I eliminated because they were combinations of the same lecture. When I add the bus tour selections as variations, well, you can see how quickly that will become unmanageable in the product.

Yes, variable products can become complex fairly quickly. But the important part is that I believe that they do not serve your specific goal (as you found out after trying).

Specifically, it looks like what I might be able to do is bundle products (like the t-shirt and souvenir pin) with events (like the concerts, meals, tours, and lectures). I don’t want to buy a plugin just to find out it won’t address my needs. So, I’m hoping you or someone who knows about this plugin can shed more light on whether that product bundles plugin would support what I’m attempting to do.

There is also another plugin that I personally use a lot which is called composite products (also by Woo). But my gut feeling (based on my knowledge of the situation and of our plugin’s architecture) is that the product bundle is worth a shot. Full disclosure, I do not know of anybody who tried it before.

I understand where you are coming from regarding buying unnecessary plugins, but as pointed out earlier, at best we can get you started in this highly custom and specific scenario.

For what it’s worth, I do believe Woo has a return policy on their plugin too. If I am correct (you should find out first), then you’ll be able to get your money back if it doesn’t work for you.

I wish I had a better answer for you, but for now it’s the best one I have.

Have a great day!

Geoff B.

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

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