The metropolitan haåçlf-price ticket market, well-known to New Yorkers and Los Angeles residents, rises in popularity with its location in Santa Barbara.
TixStar, located in the Paseo Nuevo Shopping Center, sells tickets at half-price to day-of showings for several venues in town, including movies. “We offer something for everybody,” said Christoff Snell, general manager and CEO of TixStar. Their mission is simply to help local talents receive the recognition they deserve by filling seats at shows.
“We just want to get more people to see the arts,” said Steve Guerra, events and ticketing manager.
“We don’t really make money on this, it’s just to help out the community and get people to see the arts.”
Snell and Guerra introduced Tixstar to the community last April. The concept was inspired by the successful half-price metropolitan ticket markets such as “TKTS” in New York City.
Their venues span the genres of dance, musicals, theatre productions and films.
Snell knows this has been a vision of the Santa Barbara community for over 20 years.
“There’s ‘TKTS’ in New York City, ‘Bay Area Tickets’ and ‘LA Tickets,’ stuff like that,” said Guerra. “It’s been something that Santa Barbara’s wanted for while, [it] just made sense.”
The company keeps a firm connection with the community and the local arts venues’ box offices to offer half-price tickets to anyone interested.
“We sell them usually on the day of show…it’s not like scalping tickets or anything like that,” Guerra stated. “We work with their box office.” TixStar is also known for it’s growingly popular ‘1PASS’ deal, a low-priced program aimed to get people more acquainted with what Santa Barbara has to offer.
“1PASS is geared more toward the tourists, it’s a ticket that’s good for three days that takes you through pretty much every cultural stop in Santa Barbara: the museum, the natural history museum, the mission, the zoo, and the 1PASS Plus comes with a free trolley coupon as well.”
Snell and Guerra plan on taking their market even further in ways that can benefit local college students.
“We’re trying to get discount tickets for students,” said Snell
There are also plans to expand the numbers of venues offered to the community.
Snell stated that TixStar will “literally have tickets to every venue in Santa Barbara in about a month.”
For more information on Tixtar, log-on to www.tixtar.com