How do you sell a VIP table without putting it on the public ticket page? Most venue operators have run into some version of this. You’ve got a few tables you want to sell to specific people. The headliner needs seats for their entourage. Management has a guest list. Staff want to bring friends. None of that belongs next to the $25 general admission ticket where every person who lands on the page can see it, and some of it shouldn’t be public at all.
The usual answer is a paper list at the door, or a text to the bouncer, or somebody’s name scrawled on a clipboard. It works until it doesn’t, and either way there’s no record of who got in on what.
Unlock Codes are the fix for that. The idea is simple. A promo code gives a discount on a ticket anyone can find. An Unlock Code shows a ticket type that isn’t there until you enter the code. The public sees general admission and a box that says “have a code?” The person with the code sees whatever you put behind it: a VIP table for eight, a free guest list pass, a members-only ticket, a partner allocation for a sponsor and their clients. If it shouldn’t be public, you put it behind a code.
The money part is that hidden tables still sell at full price. Take a 600-capacity club holding back four VIP tables for an upcoming headliner. Management sends an Unlock Code to the buyers they want at those tables, at $1,200 a table. All four sell without ever going public. That’s $4,800, and the public page stayed a clean, simple on-sale. Nobody got shown a VIP section they couldn’t buy into.
The part people underrate is tracking. Every ticket that goes out through an Unlock Code is a real ticket in the system. The comps, the guest list, the staff passes, all of it is scanned at the door and shows up in the report afterward. You know exactly how many free tickets went out and who issued them.
Rock ’N’ Horse Saloon in Toronto runs their whole guest list this way. When an A-list music star needed seating and tables for his entourage, those tickets went out behind an Unlock Code and the public never saw them. VIP tickets for special guests go out by code straight from management. And each staff member has their own code for free passes, for themselves and their friends, so the staff list is handled without anyone standing at the door with a list.
Our new whitepaper, Unlock Codes sell tickets the public never sees, goes through what venues put behind a code, how hidden VIP inventory sells at full price, and how Rock ’N’ Horse runs headline acts, management guests and staff passes on the same system.
Download the whitepaper below.
