Challenge

Over the first three decades of its existence, Simon Cabaret grew to become one of the most in-demand attractions in Phuket, a province in southern Thailand popular among tourists. During this time, all tickets to the show were bought in cash, via a network of ticket agents. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the cabaret was forced to close its doors, halting performances for nearly two years. Company leaders took advantage of this pause to look for ways to improve the business. In particular, they wanted to expand the cabaret’s digital presence and introduce online ticket purchases.

To accomplish these goals, Simon Cabaret partnered with The Percentage Company, a digital marketing agency that specializes in commercial strategies for hotels, resorts, travel businesses, and entertainment attractions. Within 10 weeks, The Percentage Company had built a website for Simon Cabaret, established new business management processes, streamlined operations, and introduced a digital booking solution that made it easy for customers to buy tickets online.

However, problems soon arose with the local payment provider that The Percentage Company had selected to process online ticket purchases. Simon Cabaret experienced a high payment failure rate in part due to the provider’s frequent maintenance periods, during which customers could not buy tickets. The provider also lacked the ability to process certain credit cards from foreign countries—a major hurdle for the cabaret’s audience of international visitors. In addition to these challenges, Simon Cabaret was seeing high fraud rates, largely due to scammers buying tickets with fake credit cards and reselling them to legitimate customers.

Solution

In 2021, The Percentage Company switched Simon Cabaret’s payment processing infrastructure to Stripe, which had recently become available in Thailand.

Integrating Stripe Payments offered much greater reliability for Simon Cabaret’s online booking platform, thanks to the 99.999% historical uptime for Stripe services. Stripe Payments, which supports more than 100 global payment methods, allowed Simon Cabaret to accept international credit cards as well as PromptPay, a payment system in Thailand that allows users to transfer and receive money using their mobile phone number or citizen ID.

“For us, the biggest advantage in using Stripe has been that we no longer face challenges from processing overseas payments,” said Wariya Chattay, managing director at Simon Cabaret.

To further improve the purchase experience, The Percentage Company embedded Stripe Checkout, a prebuilt payment form, into Simon Cabaret’s website, allowing customers to buy tickets in a few easy steps. And with the help of The Percentage Company, Simon Cabaret implemented Stripe Radar, which detects and blocks fraud using sophisticated machine learning trained on data across millions of global companies.

“Having best-in-class solutions like Stripe means that we can build really robust tools and enable Simon Cabaret to shoot for the sky,” said Paolo Guarracino, cofounder of The Percentage Company.

Results

Ease of implementation enables Simon Cabaret to launch Stripe Payments in less than one day

Switching from its previous payment provider to Stripe was a simple, straightforward process. With the help of The Percentage Company, Simon Cabaret implemented Payments in less than 24 hours, enabling ticket buyers to benefit immediately from Stripe’s greater ease of payment and significantly lower failure rate.

Improved reliability leads to 24% uplift in authorizations

Thanks to Stripe’s increased reliability, Simon Cabaret saw its authorization rate rise by 24% during the first year after switching providers, leading to significant revenue recovery.

Easier checkout process results in 31% increase in online revenue

With better uptime, more payment methods, and a frictionless checkout process, Stripe made it much easier for visitors to book online tickets, leading to a 31% increase in website revenue for Simon Cabaret.

“With Stripe, Simon Cabaret has seen a massive increase in conversion and profitability,” said Edward Kennedy, director and cofounder of The Percentage Company.

Fraud virtually eliminated with Stripe Radar

Radar’s powerful machine learning detects fraudulent transactions, such as the targeted attempts by scammers to purchase tickets with fake credit card numbers. Since implementing Radar, Simon Cabaret has not seen a single case of ticket fraud.

About partner

The Percentage Company is a full-service digital marketing agency based in Phuket, Thailand, with a focus on partnering with companies in the hospitality and entertainment industries. In addition to implementing digital marketing solutions, the company’s internal development team helps organizations streamline operations, drive sales, and scale profitability.