Cinemas are always looking for the best ways to improve their operations, seeking more effective technology, more efficient ways of working, and ever keeping their eye towards the future of the industry.

While we all move towards the same future, each cinema’s journey looks different.

As each cinema exhibitor is driven by unique business priorities and drivers—whether they be focused on dedicated food and beverage experiences or on security and modernisation—we have evolved the pathways of Vista Cloud adoption.

Basing the paths to connecting exhibitors with Vista Cloud on the goals and needs of each unique business, we empower each exhibitor to journey to the future of cinema technology at their preferred path and pace.

We unveiled details of the journey to Cloud recently at the 10th Vista Group Conference, and today, we’re excited to illustrate each of the key capabilities that compose the new journey.

Enabling real-time decision making across an entire cinema circuit is a key challenge in the industry. In an increasingly data-rich environment, the ability to surface the right information at the right time is vital in order to take timely action. The more responsive one can be, reacting to insights in real-time, the more opportunities can be grasped to enhance performance.

Vista Cloud’s Data Empowerment capability answers this challenge with our Horizon and Oneview solutions. Drawing rich insights from across your cinema circuit, they reveal how you’re performing, the reasons why, and provide recommendations on how you can seize every opportunity.

With Oneview—Vista’s first solution built especially for cinema executives and senior leadership—combined ticketing, moviegoer, and box office data from Vista, Movio, and Numero present users with real-time insights into the performance of their cinemas and empower them to take action.

Take for example, a cinema screening a session for Dune: Part Two that has sold out, while another film session has yet to sell any tickets. Oneview’s real-time insights can alert senior leadership right away, and enable film teams to adjust the schedule to make the best use of the otherwise wasted session that hadn’t sold by expanding for more moviegoers to see Dune: Part Two.

Vista Cloud uses progressive capabilities, each focused on key areas of cinema technology. With a progressive journey, a cinema wishing to begin with Digital Enablement will receive everything from the Data Empowerment capability as well.

Our Digital Enablement capabilities allow exhibitors to scale to blockbuster moments and deliver amazing user experiences across unified sales channels.

Whether you build with Lumos, Lumos+, or construct your channels in-house or with a third-party provider, they run on the Digital Platform, our blockbuster-ready transaction engine and comprehensive toolkit included in Digital Enablement. With the Digital Platform's modern Omnichannel APIs, deliver innovative ticketing, food and beverage ordering, subscriptions, pricing, and loyalty across every avenue of your moviegoers’ journeys.

Digital channels that run on the Digital Platform are reliable, secure, and highly-scalable both proactively and reactively. This means that even during peak traffic, such as the surge of activity when pre-release tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour Movie went on sale, resource allocation scales to accommodate traffic and maintain optimal performance.

The scalability provided by Digital Enablement ensures your site, app, and kiosk not only stays stable during blockbuster events, but also reduces or even eliminates the need for digital queues.

With integrated and scalable digital transactions, the next step of the journey to Cloud—Moviegoer Engagement—focuses on helping you to drive incremental returns and to boost your moviegoer retention with tailored interfaces, communications, and offers.

Turning your audience of moviegoers into avid, loyal fans who will return again and again is paramount to the goals of increasing visitation rates and driving higher spend-per-admit. With Vista Loyalty and Subscriptions, you’ll be equipped with flexible and powerful solutions to turn moviegoers into loyal, repeat guests.

Movio Cinema EQ provides exhibitors with a faster, simpler, and smarter data analytics and campaign management solution. With Movio Cinema EQ you can craft personalised marketing communications to enhance the engagement of your audiences.

Targeted, personalised marketing communications drive not only increased moviegoer engagement and higher visitation rates, but boost spend-per-head in moviegoers as well. A recent UK study with Movio Cinema EQ found marketing communications drove a spend uplift of as much as £690,000 per million moviegoers contacted.

Finally, Operational Excellence is about delivering more efficient and effective operations alongside improved moviegoer experiences. With centralised Head Office configuration, manage and monitor your circuit effectively, achieving enterprise-wise operations and efficiencies with Cinema Manager, POS, CashDesk, and more.

With Vista Cloud’s Operational Excellence, cinemas deliver leaner operations and an improved moviegoer experience all at once.

Core Confidence

Vista Cloud is built on a strong foundation that underpins every element, to provide you with the Core Confidence that you can leave running the service in our hands, knowing Vista has you covered. By freeing you of the concerns of maintenance and looking after your systems, you can focus on the things that matter: delighting moviegoers and optimising your operations.

Access to innovation and new features also becomes seamless, as updates to Vista Cloud are fully automated and delivered faster than ever before.

Each cinema moves at its own pace

Like every moviegoer, each cinema is unique, with specific challenges, goals, and needs for their business. While we as an industry all look towards the same future of moviegoing and cinema technology, each cinema needs to take that journey at their own pace.

Vista Cloud is built to empower this journey, bringing cinemas to Cloud with the capabilities best suited to their desires. Whether your focus is on scaling to blockbuster moments and delivering amazing user experiences with Digital Enablement, or wanting to boost moviegoer loyalty and retention with tailored communications and analytics through Moviegoer Engagement, the journey to Cloud is designed to match your goals.

We are deeply excited about what the future holds for cinema technology. If you are looking to learn more about how the journey to Cloud might suit your cinema’s unique needs, visit us at the Vista Group Experience Room at CinemaCon next week (located in the Venice Room on the Emperor's Level) for a hands-on look at the technology within each step of the Cloud journey.