Dubbo's 123 Tix wins Excellence in Micro Business award

The online ticketing provider received the Excellence in Micro Business honour at the 2021 Western NSW Business Awards, announced by state peak body Business NSW on October 15.

Events rolling in for 2022 to the 123 Tix calendar also have director Terry Wilcher looking forward to the future after months of COVID stopping the likes of shows and concerts going ahead.

He said the pandemic's effect on the industry and the business had "certainly been hard-hitting".

"Our business, like many others, has obviously been impacted heavily and it has been mentally draining for the whole team," he said.

"However, our approach has been to try to turn the negative situation into a positive and use the extra time we have had to complete significant upgrades to our services and technologies.

"Then to win an award like this is a huge morale booster, and is very welcome and coincides with events starting to really take off again."

Restrictions started to ease in NSW on October 11.

"Having been through two lockdowns we know once we are given the opportunity the business will bounce back stronger than before," Mr Wilcher said.

"The award is great recognition for our business for not only the services we offer to organisers and consumers, but it is also a way of acknowledging the hard work behind the scenes by our dedicated team.

"123 Tix is now a well-recognised name across the eastern states and being awarded the winner of the category at the regional level was a great thrill for all involved."

Mr Wilcher built 123 Tix and it went live in 2015.

It had a big win at the regional business awards in 2018, when it was named Western NSW Business of the Year.

The 123 Tix director and team members are looking forward to the state finals, to be held virtually this year, and are "crossing our fingers that we can bring a state winners' trophy back to Dubbo".

The coming months are shaping up to be busy.

"On the business side we are moving into a very busy period of the year where travelling will open back up and lots of events are coming online," Mr Wilcher said

"We have a significant number of events already committed for 2022 which is exciting.

"From a development point we have a range of new features we have been working on while we have been in lockdown that are about to be released.

"We are freshening up the look of the website, brand new functionality including waitlist, better search, categories and other functions specific for our organisers."

In April this year, 123 Tix did the whole ticketing process for the three-day Hawkesbury Show, which was attended by about 75,000 people, and set a new record for how many tickets the business had sold to one event, the director reported.

Mr Wilcher said being the only regionally-based business - and Australian-owned and operated to boot - gave 123 Tix a competitive edge over "the foreign-owned competitors".

The business had real people on the phone for support and were firmly entrenched in regional Australia, he said.

They also offered the flexibility of their customisation service and had always been open to the requirements of providing a ticketing solution that was turn-key and used the latest technology, he said.

"We have also developed inclusions such as the Discover NSW vouchers where we are the only ticket agent that has integrated this service into our platform," he said.

"This has been very well-received and enabled event organisers to increase ticket sales and we did this after being engaged by Service NSW."