Festicket enables group festival bookings with ‘Pay with Friends’

Festicket, the U.K.-headquartered festival booking platform, is launching a new feature that allows users to pay for festival tickets as a group.

Described as removing the the pain of being the lead booker, "Pay with Friends" lets a single user reserve tickets for a whole group while only having to pay for part of the payment up-front. The other members of the group then have 48 hours to pay their individual part, whereby the booking is confirmed.

Notably, however, if this doesn't happen there is a small non-refundable deposit charged to the lead booker to reserve the booking.

The idea is to avoid a situation that doubtless many of us have found ourselves in when trying to organise a group event or vacation, including attending a festival. This typically sees one person drawing the short straw and having to organise, book and pay for the trip. The new Festicket feature goes someway to mitigating this.

"Pay with Friends aims to reduce pressure on the lead booker by sharing the payment immediately with the rest of the group through a simple, fast and easy-to-use solution," says Festicket.

The new feature was born out of the popularity of group bookings on Festicket, with around 60% of festival-goers attending as a group of more than three, and 20% more than six, according to a survey carried out by the company.

The macro trend is that festivals have become a popular alternative to group holidays with international festival travel increasing by 400% over the past 5 years, says Festicket.

Adds Jonathan Younes, CPO and co-founder of Festicket, in a statement: "It's great to be able to offer our fans the option to Pay with Friends finally. We've created a fair solution that guarantees fans won't be left out of pocket just because they're the organised one out of their friends! We'll continue to add features like this to the Festicket product to make sure all our customers have the best possible booking experience".