Transforming Tradition: How haku's Event Ticketing Elevated St. George's North Pole Express Experience

Written by Haden McCarter


Introduction and Overview

The North Pole Express is a beloved Christmas event held by the city of St. George, Utah in Thunder Junction Park. This festive family celebration promotes holiday community engagement and fun. Event tickets grant access to the park and a magical journey including a ride on the North Pole Express locomotive, visits with Santa Claus himself, classic cookie decorating, warm hot cocoa, and creative holiday craft-making stations. Families immerse in the infectious yuletide spirit across event nights scheduled on various dates throughout the month of December.


The Challenge

A key challenge stemming from the rapid growth is managing ticketing and event logistics for the sharply rising number of attendees. In previous years, the North Pole Express handled ticketing through simple paper forms filled out onsite. However, this year the event organizers opted to sell all tickets online and utilize haku’s robust ticketing capabilities. 


The Solution

“Day of check-in goes a lot more efficiently since changing to haku as well, and we love that the data is readily available moments after an event.”

Sara Roundy, Special Event Coordinator City of St. George

 

Transitioning from a physical paper form to mobile/online ticketing provided efficient, customized, and convenient distribution for customers while streamlining back-end event management.

Specifically, the organizers leveraged haku’s ticketing feature to instantly deliver QR code tickets to guests upon online purchase completion. Once the QR code was scanned on-site, attendees received their physical copy of their “golden ticket” as entry into the event.

By using event ticketing with haku, the City of St. George team was able to capture detailed attendee data, equipping event staff with information to proactively manage venue capacity limitations in real time. As an illustration, configurable reports tracked current attendance across days relative to total venue constraints, enabling data-driven decision-making around entry pace control.

Integrating a purpose-built ticketing solution delivered measurable operational efficiencies, customer convenience improvements, and data-enabled attendee monitoring to dynamically align venue logistics. This paves the way for sizable future growth while preserving personalization.





The Result

By leveraging haku's Event Ticketing capability, the City of St. George has significantly enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness of their event check-in procedures. The implementation of haku has not only streamlined the check-in process but has also facilitated the extraction of valuable data-driven insights post-event. Encouraged by an increase in revenue and event attendees, the City of St. George is poised to utilize haku's ticketing feature to further optimize the management of their upcoming ticketed events.


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For further details on how haku can revolutionize your ticketed event management, visit our ticketed events page.