Savoy Systems alternatives for cinemas and arts venues

Savoy Systems, based in Nottingham and trading since 2006, makes Oscar: a ticketing, retail and marketing system for cinemas, theatres and the arts. Oscar covers the box office, café and bar with tabs and stock control, membership and loyalty, point of sale and analytics, and also offers a branded booking website with content management built into Oscar and a branded iOS and Android app. Savoy reports 120 cinemas, theatres, arts centres, schools, comedy clubs and festivals on Oscar, including the Rio Cinema, Chichester Cinema at New Park and Keswick Cinema, with 24/7 UK-based support. Pricing is by personalised quote.

Venues on Oscar tend to have the most interesting programmes in their towns: seasons, strands, Q&As, live broadcast, a bar and a membership. The question behind most Savoy alternatives searches is whether a website run from inside a ticketing system can do that programme justice. We think the answer is no, and that the fix does not require leaving Oscar.

A booking website that lives inside a ticketing system is built around the transaction: a list of events with dates and a buy button. Filmgrail is built around the decision that happens before it. Every film gets a proper page with trailer, runtime, certificate, synopsis and structured data, so it can rank for that film in your town. Seasons and strands have their own pages. Memberships are surfaced where they sell. A native app sends a push when a film someone saved goes on sale, and audience analytics show what people browsed and did not buy.

None of that needs you to leave Oscar. Filmgrail reads programme, sessions, seating and prices from Savoy Systems and writes the finished sale back, so Oscar stays the record for admissions, retail, memberships and reporting. The Savoy Systems integration page sets out what moves and what stays.

Changing the box office to fix the website is the expensive way round. Across cinemas on Filmgrail, the average yearly increase in digital ticket sales is 89%. For an Oscar venue, that upside comes without touching the counter.

Filmgrail already runs cinemas and cultural venues that programme film alongside stage and events, from Vega Scene in Oslo to town halls and concert halls across Norway, as well as circuits like Bergen Kino and Wallis Cinemas.

Pricing is published and scales by screens: from $200 a year for a single screen up to $20,000 a year for a large circuit, flat per screen with no per-ticket fees (see pricing). Because we already integrate with Savoy Systems, you can be live in a few weeks.

Start with the cinema website prototype tool: give it your current URL and see your own venue on Filmgrail. Then book a demo against your real programme.