Navigating Change: The Evolution of Copenhagen Card’s System Architecture

Baggrund

What is Copenhagen Card
Copenhagen Card is a sightseeing pass that offers customers access to free public transport and entrance to over 80 attractions in Copenhagen and surrounding area. Until end of 2022 the card was both a physical and digital card. For every visit to an attraction, the card is scanned to register the visit, and Copenhagen Card pays a percentage of the normal entrance fee to the attractions.
All profit from Copenhagen Card is going to fund projects in Wonderful Copenhagen with the purpose of attracting and creating great experiences for tourists in Copenhagen.

Making Copenhagen Card 100% digital
The architecture of the systems for running Copenhagen Card was very complex with multiple systems depended on each other, an outdated management system (both in UX and in functionality). It was time to revisit all the separate platforms as well as rethink the whole architecture. The ambition was to turn Copenhagen Card 100% digital and offer a smooth flow for the customers and partners as well as a more flexible usage inhouse.

The management system from City Card Solutions have already proven to be able to handle city cards for other cities (Vienna, Gibraltar, Innsbruck among others). They have not only the management system but also a card scanner for attractions and an API so attractions can use their own scanners and a website CMS. However, every city card is different, and the system was being used by other cities to also handle stock management of physical cards, and sales points. We needed to adjust the system to handle only digital cards and connecting our existing native app.

Løsning

From chaos to simplicity
We have centered the new architecture around the management system from City Card Solutions (“CCMS”). The management system is the hearth of operation where:
• all products and variants with prices in different currencies are created,
• orders are created,
• OTAs are created,
• Voucher codes are created,
• API connection to app, so codes can be redeemed, you can buy, and activate the digital card in the app,
• All attractions are created, with detail information about price, contact person, can send reports automatically. All descriptions, opening hours, and images are also created here,
• We can see stats (sales, codes redeemed, activation time etc.)

Our native app and the new website platform are connected directly to CCMS. All products, prices and attraction content are automatically updated on both from changes made in CCMS. Furthermore, we added a chatbot to our website.

With a new Payment Solution Provider, we have one provider with connection directly to CCMS and they automatically send reports and money to us daily.

We have integrated API-scanning in several attractions so customers can scan the Copenhagen Card for entrance on the attractions’ own scanners, and the customer can use it in the same way as for example ZOO member card. This is a big improvement for the attractions as before they needed to have a separate physical scanner only for Copenhagen Card. With this API, we can also integrate with time slot booking/ticket purchase at attractions, for example at Home of Carlsberg.

Via API to the management system, we have access to all raw data, and set up reports in PowerBi. We have set up reports to show number of activated cards, nationalities, visits to each attraction, time of day of visit, visit per Copenhagen Card variant etc. All these and several other cross data reports is vital for us to improve the business of and customer experience with Copenhagen Card. Every attraction has access to see their own data (number of visits, nationality of visitors, and the settlement to be received from Copenhagen Card).