Granada's Alhambra to put filter on website to stop ticket-buying bots

The Patronato de la Alhambra in Granada province will put filters on its website to stop robot ticket buyers. The problem is neither new nor exclusive to the Alhambra, according to the director of the Patronato, Rodrigo Ruiz-Jiménez. He wants to send a reassuring message and highlight the monument's objective of safeguarding the system and the public interest.

Ruiz-Jiménez insists that what they want is an equitable distribution and, above all, to comply with the regulations without losing sight of the fact that they are not a private company. That is why they will reinforce security and make a change to take care of the tourist sector in Granada and of course, protect the image of the monument, which has sometimes been damaged by this digital problem.

The modern tricks are placed on a small percentage of the monument's tickets. According to the Alhambra tourist board, when the tickets for a particular day are sold out, this process opens up, preventing the traditional buyer from buying tickets The capacity of the Alhambra is limited and tickets are put on sale a year in advance. In addition, there is a small percentage of leftovers that are uploaded onto the website a day before the date of the tickets, and it is in these last-minute tickets that the problem lies. These illegal websites aquire the tickets and offer them at higher prices than the official cost by offering them with complementary services such as a guide.

The director of the Alhambra points out that this surplus quota comes from the tickets that have not been used up in programmes such as Granada Card or Educa, which account for only three or four per cent, that is, some 300 or 400 tickets. When they become available on the Alhambra website, these 'bots' come into play and gain access to up to 300,000 queries in a minute - something that puts the monument's ticket sales portal out of action.

They are not the only ones affected. The websites of other monuments also receive these attacks and the Alhambra will set up a system to recognise 'ips' - a number that identifies a connection to the network - and stop the bots.

One of the ideas is to only allow a maximum of 30 or 40 tickets from the leftovers and release the tickets progressively, says the director of the Patronato de la Alhambra.

The filters will detect these attacks and block bots that are currently paralysing the ticketing portal. "The progressive uploading of tickets will improve the quality of life of the business, it will help those who buy in the correct way, although all our efforts should be aimed at cutting off these situations". This will help agents and guides who buy tickets for their clients.

"The idea is that people come with tickets bought in advance and put an end to this practice of buying them at the last minute," says the Alhambra director.