Software developer and computer consultant Steve Watts may have just the ticket to make his local business a hit overseas. The creator of box-office.bm, a website that provides online ticketing for local events ranging from the Bermuda International Film Festival to the Bermuda Culinary Arts Festival, is now hearing from companies overseas who are interested in his program for their own online ticket sales.

"We want to try to sell the software elsewhere. We have started on that and we have a couple of bites in Canada for the management system we have and then the online capability just comes with that. It is a push of the button that you hit and it transfers the show onto the Internet," Mr. Watts said. "We want to start moving forward with that. I'm sure that will happen."

Mr. Watts first designed a version of the computerised box office system for the Bermuda Musical and Dramatic Society (BMDS) five years ago so that he could halt the previous BMDS practice of selling pre-printed tickets from a bucket.

He said: "Tickets are printed out as they were needed which meant they had ticket control because if you have pre-printed tickets you can hand out the wrong ticket for the wrong night."

He created an online version of the box office in time for the BMDS 2002 Christmas show. More recently, he entered a partnership with Ben Fairn from Aardvark Communications whose marketing skills have helped the business grow significantly.

Mr. Watts said: "Since I've been with Ben, it has grown probably 50-60 percent. We basically created boxoffice.bm, redid the website, upgraded a couple servers."

Mr. Watts says that the format of boxoffice.bm has advantages over some of the other online ticket sales systems. He provides an optional e-mail newsletter to alert customers to the latest tickets available for sale. The site is also SSL secured with the certificate issued by QuoVadis and it includes interactive seating charts of each venue so customers may select the exact seat they want to sit in.

Mr. Watts said: "It is not the case that you say I want to sit in the front left section of City Hall. You specify D1 and D2 and that is how you get it."The partners charge a booking fee of ten percent on each sale although for some events this cost is already absorbed within the price of each ticket. In two years, the boxoffice.bm site has recorded almost 200,000 hits with more than 1,600 locals and visitors using it to purchase tickets for local events.

Mr. Watts said: "There was someone on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic ocean coming to Bermuda buying a ticket two days hence for a show so it can happen anywhere."

Locally, Mr. Watts is also working to increase the capabilities of boxoffice.bm by building a ticket station that could be located in public areas on the island.

He said: "It is a touch screen kiosk with a ticket printer. You would select the show you want, a seating plan will come up and then you swipe your card. If you have booked online, you would go to one of these and you can pick up your tickets at pick up points in Dockyard, St. George's so you won't have to come to town anymore."