Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival: Managing a Multi-Event Programme with Citizen Ticket

The Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival is one of Scotland’s most established whisky events, attracting visitors from around the world each spring. Across six days, the programme brings together over 500 whisky-inspired experiences — from distillery tours and masterclasses to tastings, food pairings, and live music.

Delivering a large-scale programme requires reliable event management tools. The Spirit of Speyside team chose the Citizen Ticket event ticketing platform to help streamline bookings, support their event partners, and ensure a smooth customer experience.

Implementation

What the festival needed

The team required a SaaS subscription model with the flexibility to manage their own booking fees, along with tools designed for multi-event festivals. This included the ability to upload hundreds of events quickly, provide role-based admin access for more than 50 event partners, and manage high demand on launch day through a fair queueing system. In addition, the festival needed features such as a waiting list for sell-out experiences, custom data capture for dietary requirements, and a booking interface that would be straightforward for customers to use.

What Citizen Ticket delivered

Citizen Ticket provided a set of tools that addressed these needs directly. The batch upload feature made it possible to create and publish the full programme in one process, while the queueing system ensured a fair and orderly launch for in-demand tours and tastings. Event partners were given their own admin access and training, allowing them to manage listings and customer details without relying on the central team.

To support customer experience, a white-label booking site was deployed, carrying the Spirit of Speyside brand identity across the purchase journey. Ticket questions were used to collect dietary information, giving event partners the data they needed ahead of time. Newly developed event filters on the landing page helped visitors navigate the extensive programme, while the Wish List feature allowed customers to save and plan events before tickets went on sale. Additional cross-selling tools also enabled visitors to add transport options to bookings for popular events such as ceilidhs.

Reception

The 2025 festival saw tangible benefits from using the Citizen Ticket festival management system. The Spirit of Speyside team reported that the platform was intuitive and gave them greater autonomy, particularly with the ability to make changes in real time. Administrative workload was reduced significantly as event partners managed their own events directly.

Customers responded positively to the new booking journey, with features such as the Wish List proving popular during the programme preview period. Event partners also highlighted the improved visibility and access to customer data, making event preparation more efficient.

Conclusion

By adopting Citizen Ticket’s multi-event ticketing solution, the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival was able to simplify operations, support its network of event partners, and enhance the booking experience for visitors. The collaboration demonstrates how the right tools can make a complex festival programme easier to deliver for organisers, partners, and attendees alike.