Enhancing the Illusion: How we maximised the flow of customers through digital innovation.

The challenge

Camera Obscura & World of Illusions is one of Edinburgh’s most iconic attractions, drawing huge volumes of global visitors year-round with its unique blend of historical charm and interactive illusions. However, behind the scenes, their digital infrastructure wasn’t keeping pace with visitor expectations or operational demands. Long queues, slow ticketing processes, and fragmented systems were undermining the magic.

Key challenges included:

• Long on-site queues during peak visitor hours

• Poor visitor spread meaning that the venue was quiet at times and over subscribed at others.

• Low online conversion rates due to a lack of an online booking process

• Fragmented data across systems, limiting insight and agility

• No dynamic pricing or capacity tools for smarter management

• Complex scheduling for internal timed events and experiences

• Lack of integration between ticketing, EPOS, and backend systems.

What we delivered

We designed and delivered a high-performance digital ticketing ecosystem to match the energy and playfulness of the brand—while solving operational bottlenecks. The result is a faster, smarter, and more scalable solution for guests and staff alike.

System functionality:

• Dynamic pricing and real-time capacity management

• Integrated booking for timed experiences within the attraction at the world famous Camera Obscura

• High-volume online ticketing engine with mobile-first UX

• Support for individual, group, and third-party bookings

• Unified EPOS across entrance points, retail, and internal events

• Streamlined group processing through single-ticket scanning.