SSA Group Expands Its Admissions Services and Shares Safety Resources with Attraction Industry

As a company focused on helping cultural attractions fuel their mission, SSA Group (SSA) is expanding our ticketing and admissions services. Sean McNicholas, SSA Group CEO adds, “SSA’s growth and operational success in food and retail has resulted in our customers asking us to also operate their admissions. We’ve listened, and we have built a solid foundation with our world class admissions team.”

Earlier this year, Scott Lobaugh joined SSA Group as their Vice President of Admissions to spearhead this dynamic emergence into admissions. “For the last 14 years, I have worked for one of the leading ticketing and admissions POS companies. It provided me with incredible opportunities to work at a deep level with hundreds of cultural attractions as well as other major attractions such as Disney and Universal Parks worldwide. I was offering a POS solution that could help with efficiencies and also help drive revenue, but in many cases, the attraction was missing parts of the strategical, technical, and operational skillsets needed to drive it.

At SSA, we can now have a bigger impact with an experienced team that not only handles the technical end of ticketing POS systems, but also provides best practices on the operational and strategical side. I now get to use all of the ‘in the trenches’ experience to have an even bigger impact for our partners and our guests, and I am ecstatic.” Scott Lobaugh commented.

SSA’s goal is to take the complexity out of managing the multiple facets of admissions so our cultural attraction partners can power their mission. With deep experience across all aspects of this service, SSA is positioned to continually grow this team.

The timing of this addition has strengthened SSA Group’s reopening strategies as we move forward post COVID-19. SSA has been able to meld our expertise with admissions together with our food and retail subject matter experts. These subject matter experts have been organized into a SSAfety First taskforce that provides a tactical decision framework and checklist full of detailed operational guidance for our partners.

The SSAfety First taskforce is a group of cross departmental SSA team members with a purpose to provide a central resource for the following:

  • Safety training and communication
  • Best practices, SOPs and protocols for operation updates/changes that are driven by new safety guidelines across retail, food and admissions
  • PPE – acquiring and distributing PPE for team members 

McNicholas concludes, “This taskforce has been able to quickly organize and provide great tools that we are extending to our partners and the industry as a whole. We don’t see the need to reinvent the wheel on items we know we will all be working on. It’s been positively received by our partners.”

Attractions interested in downloading the reopening training and other resources can access them here.

Tracy S. Kubota, Acting Director, Department of Enterprise Services, Honolulu Hawaii, stated, “This is an excellent presentation! Thanks for providing the necessary tools to support our efforts to prepare for the new normal. It framed the steps for us which makes it so much easier to move forward together for a reopening which will be as safe as possible.”

“Thank you again for meeting with our team. As I mentioned on the call, this information was more helpful than you know and we are so appreciative of the work you have done and your willingness to share it with us! We have only been partnering with SSA for a very short time, but each and every interaction I have had with anyone so far has exceeded my expectations and this one was no exception!” from Laurie Phelps, Vice President for Guest and Institutional Services at The Strong Museum.

SSA currently has six cultural attraction partners utilizing our admissions services including: Chattanooga Zoo, Great Plains Zoo, Bishop Museum and Pearl Harbor Attractions (USS Missouri Memorial Association, Pacific Fleet Submarine Memorial Association and Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum). As we continue to grow in this area, we look forward to helping more partners activate their mission. SSA focuses on innovative solutions to revenue driving services like admissions, food and retail as well as the convergence of all three.

For more information on SSA’s approach to admissions please visit the admissions page on our website.

About SSA Group: Rooted in family and relationships, SSA Group activates the ticketing, culinary, and retail merchandise moments between the experiences at cultural attractions across the United States. Founded almost 50 years ago, SSA is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, partners with over 60 cultural attractions, and has served well over 20 million families annually. SSA Group is an industry leader in delivering an innovative suite of products and revenue driving services. Built by family for families, our operational models are powered by exceptional results and continuously reshaped to align with changing consumer expectations. Our motto is, “Your Mission. Together”

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