WATCH: Steve Drake on accesso’s expanding portfolio | Planet Attractions
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WATCH: Steve Drake on accesso’s expanding portfolio
Dual additions to accesso’s product portfolio have strengthened the attractions technology provider’s offering in 2023. Steve Drake, accesso’s senior vice president of Global Initiatives, speaks to Planet Attractions
Tom Anstey | Planet Attractions | 06 Nov 2023
Attractions technology provider accesso has made a number of additions to its portfolio in recent times.
In May, the company announced the launch of a new PoS platform for restaurant and retail areas in theme parks, also announcing the acquisition of leading ticketing and visitor management system provider VGS the following month.
Described as a "fast, frictionless, flexible and scalable service delivery solution," accessoFreedom builds upon intellectual property acquired from solutions provider Omnico Group and offers cross-functionality that enables the platform to be used in both retail and food service areas. Features include mobile ordering, self-service and automated check-out options, kiosks, loyalty programme support, cashless payments and comprehensive kitchen management.
Meanwhile VGS - a leading ticketing and visitor management system provider for leisure, entertainment and cultural businesses worldwide - now falls under the accesso banner as accesso Horizon.
Discussing accesso’s newest addition and his history with the company, Steve Drake, senior vice president of Global Initiatives, spoke to Planet Attractions about the new products and what they mean for accesso’s offering.
Tell us about yourself and accesso
“I'm Steve Drake. I'm the senior vice president of Global Initiatives for accesso. I've been in the industry for 25 years. I'm the original founder of what was then called Lo-Q, which was a company that invented a system to allow people to rent a service to keep them out of line for rollercoasters.
accesso now does a multitude of things in the attraction industry, but we're totally focussed on being the technology leader.”
What’s new with accesso?
“We’ve recently made three acquisitions. One was in the ski industry and another was in the professional services division. We recently also acquired a company called VGS, who you would recognise as being the gold star for POS and ticketing systems, and that goes very nicely with our Gold Star e-commerce accesso Passport product.
We're launching that and calling it accesso Horizon. We're still referring to VGS because everybody knows it, in the title, so we're relaunching that.
Secondly, we acquired the assets of a company called Omnico, who have a POS for F&B and retail. We've locked the engineers away for a year, added features and functionality and brought it back out. We're relaunching that as accesso Freedom. Those are two of the newest things that we've got that we want everybody to know about.”
What does adding these companies do for accesso?
“Ticketing-wise, we’ve probably been more famous for our e-commerce offering, and that's basically where our focus is.
We would classify ourselves as the Gold Star e-commerce ticketing platform. Without naming companies, we do pretty much all the major groups for that.
VGS is a newer company, but they are definitely the gold star product for on-site POS ticketing, so when you put the two together, they complement each other really nicely and it plugs a bit of a gap in our product portfolio.
POS in F&B and retail is something relatively new to us. We have an older product called Sirius which does a similar thing but this has been brought up to modern day, so it's more of a modern offering. Some of the bigger clients actually still use the product but we've added to it and we made it better and hopefully, you know, the industry takes to it kindly. Amongst all the other things we do, these are two very strong new brands for us.”
WATCH: Steve Drake on accesso’s expanding portfolio | Planet Attractions
video
WATCH: Steve Drake on accesso’s expanding portfolio
Dual additions to accesso’s product portfolio have strengthened the attractions technology provider’s offering in 2023. Steve Drake, accesso’s senior vice president of Global Initiatives, speaks to Planet Attractions Tom Anstey | Planet Attractions | 06 Nov 2023
Attractions technology provider accesso has made a number of additions to its portfolio in recent times.
In May, the company announced the launch of a new PoS platform for restaurant and retail areas in theme parks, also announcing the acquisition of leading ticketing and visitor management system provider VGS the following month.
Described as a "fast, frictionless, flexible and scalable service delivery solution," accessoFreedom builds upon intellectual property acquired from solutions provider Omnico Group and offers cross-functionality that enables the platform to be used in both retail and food service areas. Features include mobile ordering, self-service and automated check-out options, kiosks, loyalty programme support, cashless payments and comprehensive kitchen management.
Meanwhile VGS - a leading ticketing and visitor management system provider for leisure, entertainment and cultural businesses worldwide - now falls under the accesso banner as accesso Horizon.
Discussing accesso’s newest addition and his history with the company, Steve Drake, senior vice president of Global Initiatives, spoke to Planet Attractions about the new products and what they mean for accesso’s offering.
Tell us about yourself and accesso
“I'm Steve Drake. I'm the senior vice president of Global Initiatives for accesso. I've been in the industry for 25 years. I'm the original founder of what was then called Lo-Q, which was a company that invented a system to allow people to rent a service to keep them out of line for rollercoasters.
accesso now does a multitude of things in the attraction industry, but we're totally focussed on being the technology leader.”
What’s new with accesso?
“We’ve recently made three acquisitions. One was in the ski industry and another was in the professional services division. We recently also acquired a company called VGS, who you would recognise as being the gold star for POS and ticketing systems, and that goes very nicely with our Gold Star e-commerce accesso Passport product.
We're launching that and calling it accesso Horizon. We're still referring to VGS because everybody knows it, in the title, so we're relaunching that.
Secondly, we acquired the assets of a company called Omnico, who have a POS for F&B and retail. We've locked the engineers away for a year, added features and functionality and brought it back out. We're relaunching that as accesso Freedom. Those are two of the newest things that we've got that we want everybody to know about.”
What does adding these companies do for accesso?
“Ticketing-wise, we’ve probably been more famous for our e-commerce offering, and that's basically where our focus is.
We would classify ourselves as the Gold Star e-commerce ticketing platform. Without naming companies, we do pretty much all the major groups for that.
VGS is a newer company, but they are definitely the gold star product for on-site POS ticketing, so when you put the two together, they complement each other really nicely and it plugs a bit of a gap in our product portfolio.
POS in F&B and retail is something relatively new to us. We have an older product called Sirius which does a similar thing but this has been brought up to modern day, so it's more of a modern offering. Some of the bigger clients actually still use the product but we've added to it and we made it better and hopefully, you know, the industry takes to it kindly. Amongst all the other things we do, these are two very strong new brands for us.”
