Cristina Hodgson
THE Alhambra Palace in Granada has sold 12,590 tickets in the first eight hours of its new ticketing system.
The new system launched yesterday , has so far sold an average of 1,200 tickets per hour.
With this new system, which will coexist with the previous one until May 1, it is also expected that visitors can plan their visit to the monument earlier and thus increase their overnight stay in Granada and the province.
Up to 10 tickets can be purchased at once and can be printed anywhere, ready to be scanned by entry staff, eliminating the long queues in front of the ticket office.
The new system however has made the tickets nominative, so identity via national ID (UE nationals) or passport is a must to be granted access to the 13th century palace.
This control permits the Alhambra Council to control fraud by checking the identity of the visitors.
The normal entrance fee of a day-ticket is €14 with an additional €0,85 commission per ticket for reserving online.
The official site is in Spanish and English: www.tickets.alhambra-patronato.es.
For those tourists who like to plan their holidays months in advance, you’ll be delighted to learn that the Alhambra tickets will now be available for purchase three months ahead, and it’s possible that with time the system will allow for purchase of tickets up to one year in advance.
For those who plan things more on the spur of the moment, tickets can be purchased on the very same day of the visit, up to two hours before the allocated time for the entrance to the Nasrid Palaces.
The Alhambra offers six types of visit: General Alhambra Entrance, Generalife and Alacazaba, Nasrid Palaces Night Visit, Generalife Night Visit, Alhambra Experience and Combined Visit.
The only visit that includes everything (the Nasrid Palaces, Generalife gardens, Alcazaba, etc.) is the daytime General Admission Ticket (Alhambra General).
The director of the Board of the Alhambra and Generalife, Rocio Diaz, has indicated that the implementation of the new system has seen some “incidents” which have caused a “slowdown” in the response times of the ticket sale website at times of high demand, which reached 21,000 connections in 20 minutes, matching the daily average of the portal in February.
The Olive Press tried to access the site this morning and it took several attempts before it successfully loaded.
Diaz said: “All the necessary measures will continue to be implemented to improve the purchase process through the website.”
