Forget about sneaking into the show, the Agricultural Society of Kenya (ASK) is trying out its new electrically indexed Agricultural Show entrance tickets today, 19 July, during the opening of the Kisumu Agricultural Show.

The e-tickets, which bear bar-codes, will be sold at the entrance to the show-ground’s and will be swiped, allowing entry to the agricultural fare. ASK hopes that this new system will increase its gate collections by cutting down on the use of counterfeit or recycled tickets. Speaking with Business Daily, Mr Charles Owelle, a regional ASK official in Kisumu said, “Once the ticket is swiped it cannot be reused since each bar code is a unique identifier. This will help us in getting accurate collections.”

As posted in the Business Daily, ASK is banking on e-ticketing to improve revenue collection from agricultural and trade fairs, the main source of its income.

The new ticketing system will help ASK create a database of Kenyans who attend agricultural shows and index them using demographic characteristics such as: age of the ticket holder, gender and occupation. Mr Oyugi said that these details would help ASK determine the reach and relevance of regional agricultural shows.

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