Movie Ticket Booking App for a Cinema Chain Operating in 15 European Countries

Customer

The Customer is a large movie theater chain that operates in 15 European countries.

Challenge

The Customer had a movie ticket booking web solution comprising two integrated systems, but wasn’t satisfied with the complementing mobile app and needed a new, more stable and modern-looking app. Unlike the existing app, the new one was to draw seat plans, send notifications, and easily pull in data (movie database, related media, user ratings, and comments) from both web systems.

Solution

ScienceSoft created smooth mobile UI from scratch and, after getting the design approved, proceeded with app development. Together with the Customer, it was decided to develop a cross-platform app on Xamarin to reach out to a larger user base.

Not to overload the app with the business logic necessary for communicating with the two existing systems, ScienceSoft suggested developing a separate back end for it. The back end now stores all the business logic of the mobile app and allows easy data exchange with both systems of the web solution. The client app itself is extremely lightweight.

As for the functions, the app allows choosing a movie by viewing show times either for all movie theaters in town (location is defined automatically via GPS) or a specific one. Once a user chooses the payment method – a credit or a loyalty card – they can see a seating plan. Depending on the movie theater, there can be up to 12 different types of seats. Unlike the previous solution, the current app can show all the types and their details correctly.

A user can install the app and buy a ticket without registration. In this case, once the order is paid for, a digital ticket is automatically sent to a user’s email as well as downloaded to a user’s device. A registered user receives a ticket via email and also sees it right in their user profile in the app. Along with the purchasing history, the profile menu of registered users shows stats on loyalty points and allows them to turn on or off push notifications for certain events, movies or movie theater updates.

Results

The Customer was satisfied with the final solution. They have already requested continuous support services that will include adding new features to the app. Moreover, the Customer plans to implement another ticket booking solution in cooperation with ScienceSoft.

Technologies and Tools

Mobile app: Xamarin.Forms.

Back end: PHP, Symfony 7.