Long before a customer arrives on site, both their experience and an organization’s revenue potential are shaped by what happens during the checkout journey. At INTIX 2026 in Las Vegas, Sam Biscoe, Marketing and Partnerships Manager at Secure My Booking, will dig into this pivotal moment in a session titled “Don’t Give Up the Upsell” on Thursday, Jan. 29 at 10:45 a.m. PT. The conversation will explore how carefully framed add-ons can enhance the audience experience while meaningfully increasing secondary spend across every genre.
Biscoe says the need for this conversation became clear through his work with hundreds of organizations. “At Secure My Booking, we work with 300+ organizations. When we're onboarding new people, we see the types of stuff that they are already selling, and where our product fits in with their existing elements,” he explains. “There are so many organizations that are not utilizing secondary spend at all. It felt natural that we could speak to that, because we are able to provide lots of different examples inside and outside of the performing arts. There are lots of really helpful examples about who is doing it really well, who could improve their offer and ultimately helping the audiences have a better experience when they get [to the online sales environment], and also, obviously, helping organizations earn some extra revenue.”
That balance — meaningful value for the guest and earned revenue for the organization — is at the core of what Biscoe and his colleague Hannah Bishop, Data and Systems Manager at Secure My Booking, will share at INTIX 2026.
Getting Customers to Say “Yes, Please!”
Sam Biscoe
The fast-paced, ideas-packed session aims to “reignite your love for the checkout add-on.” While ticketing professionals will have to attend to learn all the tips, Biscoe says the secret lies in presentation. “Without giving too much away, a lot of it is about framing, and it's about how to ask your customers to buy something and to say ‘yes, please’,” he says.
A critical part of that is managing expectations. “Do they already know about what to expect as part of their checkout journey? A lot of places worry about adding extra clicks for people to check out, but I think as long as you have communicated with the audience what to expect from that process … they're going to understand and probably take their time a bit more, and not be like, oh, that is just another box to get rid of, or just something else to skip. They will hopefully engage a bit more with the things that you're trying to upsell.”
Biscoe recommends beginning that communication earlier than most venues currently do. Social media tends to focus solely on the show, he says, but the buying process also needs attention. “Sometimes you just need to support people in their booking journey, in the checkout flow — what to expect, how long does that take, what does it look like and what are the types of things that you might be able to offer. Giving a bit more accessible awareness is really helpful, and that can be done through obvious public social media posts, but also in any email communications that you have about booking a show. We are always talking about ‘book the show,’ but we're never talking about ‘if you book the show, this is what's going to happen.’ That can be as simple as having icons on an email somewhere that says ‘select your tickets, upgrade your experience and check out’ … If people understand what to expect, then they're more likely to engage.”
Add-on trends vary across markets. “In the U.K., ice cream sales are a really popular thing at the interval (intermission),” Biscoe says. “That doesn't really happen in the U.S.” Stateside, audiences tend to gravitate toward merchandise and specialty drinks. Across both regions, he says, “ticket refund protection is starting to become very popular,” especially as venues seek to move away from the flexible refund policies that emerged during COVID. “The U.S., I think, has been more sports arenas and really big concerts that you might have traditionally seen [ticket refund protection] on, but I think that performing arts venues and smaller organizations are catching on to the idea that there are people out there that would want to be able to have their money back [in certain circumstances].”
Another critical factor is ensuring the upsell matches the performance. “If you're doing ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ you might decide that having an afternoon tea is going to a good add-on for the show … but you wouldn't then necessarily put afternoon tea on for some sort of rock-pop tribute show.” Customization, he adds, makes all the difference. “We see it all the time with cinema now. I mean, part two ‘Wicked: For Good’ has … a tote bag, there is a bubble wand, there's all sorts of enticing merchandise, so it is making the most of those things, and if you can customize those bits as well, then great.”
According to Biscoe, the biggest mistake venues make is offering too many things. “They are very excited, they want to be able to make use of the functionality that they have in their ticketing system, and they go nuts on the number of things they can have [as upsells]. It is about making sure that what is being offered is relevant … You could be selling bar vouchers, but if they are for a specific type of wine, you might not know that you are going to want to have a glass of Rioja at 7 p.m. on the 30th of November in 2027 … If those vouchers are more exchangeable for a number of different things, then that will be really relevant. A lot of venues will sell parking vouchers. Is that something that they need at the time? Is it something that should only be booked in advance? Can they get it elsewhere later on? It's the same thing with scripts … They are probably not something that people are going to want to buy until they've seen the show and have [thought], ‘Actually, yes, I would quite like to re-read or revisit that.’ [Scripts] might be better off positioned in a post-show email.”
Pricing, timing, and placement heavily influence whether an add-on succeeds or is ignored. “If it is too much, people won't add it. If it is in the wrong place, they'll skip it. A lot of what this session is about is that sort of framing, of what should happen with your merchandise, add-ons, upsells, drinks, VIP packages, all of those different things we touch on. Particularly, we've got some case studies and some really useful information in there, so come along.”
Hannah Bishop
Then there is the pricing psychology behind the upsell, which Biscoe and Bishop will also touch on during the session. “Something that is $2.95 will feel much cheaper than something that is $3.00, and it is the same upwards as well. If you've got something that's on sale at $49.99, just dropping that one cent off can make people go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s under 50 pounds or $50.’ We all know it, but we still fall for it, and it feels like we are getting a much better bargain for some reason because our brains see the lower number. So, it's making the most of that consumer psychology as well, and not to be afraid to have to reconcile 99 cents somewhere.”
Avoiding a “pushy” feeling requires care with language and intent. “It's going to be something that is ultimately enhancing the audience's experience of what they are about to come and see,” he says. “Making sure [the ask] is in at the right place at the right time … will really help ensure that it doesn't feel like it hasn't been thought about by the organization, and that it feels relevant to the experience customers are about to have.”
Biscoe’s session includes a detailed walkthrough of ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’ in London, a dining-and-show hybrid. “The whole experience is about how you arrive at the building, how you are cared for throughout that process; but that journey starts with the ticketing,” he says. The case study outlines “a great step-by-step … with a lot of best practice information.”
The teaser fact he shares is compelling: “49% of all of the transactions for ‘Mamma Mia! The Party’ have some sort of add-on on top of it. That’s the tantalizing fact — come and find out why 49% of the audience have upgraded their experience for the show.”
Biscoe believes the potential revenue impact for organizations is enormous. “There is money being left on the table, and they should embrace selling additional items that are going to help them earn extra revenue,” he says. “Whilst that might feel like a lot of additional work, hopefully the payoff will really help the customers have an extraordinary experience, and they'll want to come back for more of that. It helps increase the additional revenue into the organization as well, which is so needed by everybody across the world at the moment, including all the performing arts organizations. I don't know anybody working in live entertainment who says, ‘Actually, no, we've got quite enough money.’”
The session will also address five common barriers to upselling, including one major misconception: “Customers don't want to feel like they've been squeezed for every cent of their earnings. The concern is that audiences might feel like they are pressured into spending more money whilst checking out, and actually, they just want to buy the tickets. They might already perceive the tickets to be expensive, which is why a lot of people won't necessarily add something on. Overcoming that means focusing on value and what that extra thing to buy actually means. Is it good value for money? Is it also increasing the value of your experience? The other thing is to bundle things together smartly, so a package could feel like a much better deal than just individual things to add on. That's tip number one, and there are four more.”
Editor’s Note: Discover four additional common barriers to upselling, plus learn how to unlock new revenue potential and elevate the guest experience at the 47th Annual INTIX Conference & Exhibition in Las Vegas. Register today for INTIX 2026!
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