ISSN 1746-7659, England, UK

Journal of Information and Computing Science

Vol. 12, No.2, 2017, pp.113-122

Design and implementation of an online booking system for a

cinema house
Raphael Akinyede1, Temitayo Balogun1, Gabriel Iwasokun1
1
Department of Computer Science, The Federal University of Technology,
Akure, Nigeria, E-mail: femi_akinyede@yahoo.com; roakinyede@futa.edu.ng.
(Received November 02, 2016, accepted February 11, 2017)

Abstract. As businesses are getting better, and many lifestyle changes. The movie community has not
changed preferences. Many people still queue to pay for placement to watch movie in cinema houses. For
those who hated queueing, they would buy a VCD or DVD to watch at home. The introduction of e-services
has shown that e-commerce website can promote a trendy way for people to perform booking/reservation. As
far as the subject matter is concerned, online booking systems can be developed for bus stations, airports,
hotels, cinemas and other centers that engage in reservation. However, in this research, we developed an
online booking system for cinema house called FLOW entertainments. We used Hypertext MarkUp
Language, Cascading Style Sheet and JavaScript for the front end and MySQL database as the back end; and
PHP as the scripting language. The designed system was implemented using the XAMPP package. XAMPP
comes with the Apache as the server, NetBeans and Dreamweaver CSS were used at the customer-side for
the development. The developed system was successfully tested on a computer system with a 4 gigabyte
RAM and a DUAL CORE processor with a processor speed of 2.16GHz.
Keywords: e-commerce; online booking, reservation; Hypertext MarkUp Language; Cascading Style
Sheet and JavaScript.

1. Introduction
According to Zozi [1], online booking systems bring tour and activity business owners into the 21st
century and it is defined as making a reservation or appointment for a service via the Internet. When you pair
the technology with old-school customer service, your business gets an exciting edge for selling services and
filling activities. With it, customers can book for show tickets online and pay via the Internet beforehand
using debit/credit or master cards, etc. After an online payment, customer will receive a booking code or
serial number which is unique for entry and also a form or ticket with the code on it will be printed by the
customer. The ticket will include the passport of the customer for security against theft. In case of loss of
ticket, the customer can go online to request for another one; and this differs a lot from the traditional

 Hotel for booking rooms

booking, which involves long hours queuing for tickets. Some major areas of application include;

 Cinema houses
 Airport for booking tickets
 Event Organizations for football shows and concert seat reservations
 Bus and train bookings
 Used in making reservations in healthcare
1.1. Historical perspective of e-booking systems

Booking systems was brought to being by seat reservations which began with airline reservation and the
history of airline reservations systems began in the late 1950s when American Airlines required a system that
would allow real-time access to flight details in all of its offices, and the integration and automation of its
booking and ticketing processes. As a result, Sabre (Semi-Automated Business Research Environment) was
developed and launched in 1964. Sabre's breakthrough was its ability to keep inventory correct in real time,
accessible to agents around the world. Prior to this, manual systems required centralized reservation centres,
groups of people in a room with the physical cards that represented inventory, in this case, seats on airplanes.
Wikipedia, [2], reported that in 1946, American Airlines installed the first automated booking system, the
experimental electromechanical Reservisor. A newer machine with temporary storage based on a magnetic

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114 Raphael Akinyede et al.: Design and implementation
of an online booking system for a cinema house

drum, the Magnetronic Reservisor, soon followed. This system proved successful, and was soon being used
by several airlines, as well as Sheraton Hotels and Goodyear for inventory control. It was seriously hampered
by the need for local human operators to do the actual lookups; ticketing agents would have to call a booking
office, whose operators would direct a small team operating the Reservisor and then read the results over the
telephone. There was no way for agents to directly query for the system.
Other airlines soon established their own systems. Delta Air Lines launched the Delta Automated Travel
Account System (DATAS) in 1968. United Airlines and Trans World Airlines followed in 1971 with the
Apollo Reservation System and Programmed Airline Reservation System (PARS), respectively (Agianaku,
[3]). Soon, travel agents began pushing for a system that could automate their side of the process by
accessing the various ARSes directly to make reservations. Fearful this would place too much power in the
hands of agents, American Airlines executive Robert Crandall proposed creating an industry-wide Computer
Reservation System to be a central clearinghouse for U.S. travel; other airlines demurred, citing fear of
antitrust prosecution.
A computer reservations system (CRS) is a computerized system used to store and retrieve information
and conduct transactions related to air travel. Originally designed and operated by airlines, CRSes were later
extended for the use of travel agencies. Major CRS operations that book and sell tickets for multiple airlines
are known as global distribution systems (GDS) (Wikipedia, [2]). Airlines have divested most of their direct
holdings to dedicated GDS companies, who make their systems accessible to consumers through Internet
gateways. Modern GDSes typically allow users to book hotel rooms and rental cars as well as airline tickets.
They also provide access to railway reservations in some markets although these are not always integrated
with the main system. And now in the world today, online booking experiences are important for customers
and are likely to influence future online travel portals. Based on CWT client transactions for North America
[4]), online booking still has a long way to go in our world today. Based on the analysis carried out by CWT
Travel Management Institute in 2006 and as shown in figure 1, the comparison of transaction costs online.

Figure 1. Comparison of transaction costs online (Source: CWT Travel Management Institute [5])
1.2. Review of related works

Naomi et al., [6] developed an automated Ticket Reservation System for the Millennium Forum. The
work incorporated features that aided the process of online booking for visually impaired customers. Though,
the application was designed for customers to reserve theatre tickets for various shows, but customers may
become distracted or tired having to listen carefully to a long spoken dialogue. In addition, is the difficulties
in understanding accents, for example, Irish accents.
Alex, [7] developed a user-friendly online hotel booking web interface. The work analyzed the primary
user interface and usability aspects of the booking process within hotel websites and also suggested
improvements that can be made to many commonly used business to customers (B2C) booking-process
designs. However, the research was limited in that it has the same level of occupancy in each room. This is a
problem because, in numerous hotels, the rate per room is different depending upon the status of the room.
Ainin, et al., [8] analyzed e-Ticketing as a new way of making purchase. In their work, they identified
e-ticketing trends among urban communities particularly in Kuala Lumpur, its usefulness, reliability, security,
conveniences and efficiency. They later developed an application that allows customers to pay for ticket

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Journal of Information and Computing Science, Vol. 12(2017) No. 2, pp 113-122 115

online. The limitation encountered in this work however was that the majority of the respondents were
highly-educated and have high income status. These characteristics created a bias and constrain to the ability
to extrapolate from the findings.
Maike, et al., [9] developed an integrated urban e-ticketing for public transport and touristic sites with
the aim of combining several modes of transport (e.g. train, bus, car, bike-sharing, etc) on a single ticket.
However, the implementation required great efforts, since many stakeholders need to agree on standards,
overall arrangements, interfaces designs, overall purpose, and revenue sharing, which is difficult tasks in
multi-actor contexts, including stakeholders in an environment that is already very difficult to govern.
Ljubica, et al., [10] analyzed online hotel sales strategies with emphasis on web booking. The work was
a detailed study of world achievements in the context of Information Technology (IT) development in online
hotel sales matching empirical findings which consist of the entire process of designing and setting up rates
and sales strategies. It also focused on the sales strategy needed to boost the web presence of the hotel for
their web booking. However, it was limited in that it was difficult to adjust to today’s world standards,
because of outdated technology, which is due to the economic situation of that time.
Stanitov, [11] implemented a conceptual marketing framework for Online Hotel Reservation System
(OHRS) which was a theoretical framework of online hotel reservation systems’ (OHRS) design. The work
introduced the value model of an OHRS as a central concept in the OHRS’s design process and elaborates
some of the critical marketing decisions in the design process including orientation of the system (to agents
or direct customers), net or commissionable rates, room inventory, booking additional services, booking
limitations, issuing travel and booking related documents, online payments, market intelligence, customer
feedback capabilities and additional onsite resources. However, the limitation was that though it was a
technically perfect website design it could be catastrophic from a marketing perspective if it does not provide
excellent online customer experience and stimulates bookings.
Canada Health, Infoway [12] developed a friendly web application where customers can book
appointments with doctors analyzed consumer health solutions as a way of exploring the value, benefits and
common concerns of e-booking. It discovered that Canadians regularly book vacations online, use ATMs
and conduct a wide variety of tasks over the Internet which previously required telephone or in-person
contact. The work was limited in that it is possible for the patients to book up the whole schedule of the
doctor whereas the doctor has appointment schedule that he does not want the patients to book online.

2. System analysis and design

2.1. Technological design of the system

In designing and implementing this secured system, the design architecture are into three phases (i.e.
The front-end, middle-tier and back-end). These also form the components that was used in designing the
system and these design components include;
Web browsers
HTML, CSS and JavaScript for the front end design
Web Server (Apache)
PHP (A scripting language)
Relational Database System (MySQL)
The System is designed to run specifically on the web apache’s server and all other operating systems
that make use of this technology. The System is platform independent (i.e. it can work on all web browsers)
with the use of XAMP server which is the combination of Apache, PHP and the MySQL database.

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116 Raphael Akinyede et al.: Design and implementation
of an online booking system for a cinema house

Figure 2. A technological design of the system (source: http://mainwpex.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-

content/uploads/HTML-Request.gif [13])
Among the various components of the desired system is the figure 2 above and sketching the above
figure is also represented below
The back-end components: It consists of a MySQL database. This stores all the necessary information
about the administrator and users of the system. The application also allows multiple ticket purchases and as
such tables were designed to have a space for it. All the information concerning the users is stored in the
users table. In this case, the administrator can view the purchases and also validate such purchases. All the
available films and their information are stored in the admin panel table. In this way, the administrator can
add movies, time, day, and banners and so on to the system. In addition, the movie news table stores up news
related to entertainment on the website, this action is done by the administrator. The available seats are
stored up in the available seat table which makes it possible to indicate when a seat is booked. This (back-
end) is hidden from view of regular website visitors because it is the brain of the website that is built with the
server side language (PHP) and database.
The front-end components: It interacts with a customer in real time while back-end code interacts with
a server to return customer ready results. Whatever is displayed on the website is mainly as a result of the
query performed on the server and returned data to the front-end.
Hypertext preprocessor (PHP): It is a server side scripting language (code) in the backend that connects
with a database (MySQL) to lookup, save or change data and return it back to the customer in form of front-
end code
Code igniter: It is a PHP Mode View Controller (MVC) Framework that allows developers code up
his/her web application with little effort while achieving much simultaneously. The framework is designed
such that the developer can easily configure and manage his/her application files from a central point.
2.2. Architectural design of the system

Component Architecture:
The proposed system is a web application built on client-server architecture that allows user to get all
the relevant information by accessing the site anywhere, anytime via web browser. The system also consists
of two layers, client and server layers. As shown in figure 3, server interacts with several clients, ranging
from from � = , , … … . . n, at the same time (see figure 3).

Figure 3. System component architecture

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Journal of Information and Computing Science, Vol. 12(2017) No. 2, pp 113-122 117

Process Architecture
As shown in figure 4, the proposed e-booking system has three tiers which are the front-end, middle tier
and back-end. The customer interacts with the system through the front-end by making requests which is
processed through the PHP, which is the middle tier. The system is executed on a central server and all
clients communicate with it. A client handles customer interface while server handles function and
operations of relevant component. All data are resident on the system server, which has the ability to interact
with several clients at the same time by running several processes concurrently. Some of the processing
undertaken includes verification, validations, manipulations, request processing, etc. Figure 5 also show the
system architecture of the proposed system.

Figure 4. Architectural framework of the proposed system.

Figure 5. The System architecture of the proposed system (adopted from:

http://image.slidesharecdn.com/onlinebusreservationsystem-marketopportunities-100622121534-
phpapp02/95/online-bus-reservation-system-in-india-16-728.jpg?cb=1277209034 [14])
Use case diagram of the system

Figure 6. the use case diagram of the system

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118 Raphael Akinyede et al.: Design and implementation
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Use cases description as shown in figure 6.

Login: After registration, the customer goes through the process of logging in else, access would be
denied. The user logs in with a username and password. The system will verify the username and password
to check its validity before the customer is granted entry upon the validity of the information provided, else
the user is denied access to the system.
Search movies: The customer can search the movies available for viewing in the system. The system
will also display the information of the selected movie by the user.
Booking: the system offers a seat reservation system for the user where the user can choose the
particular section or seat where he wants to sit after logging in.
Payment for booking: in other to preserve reservation after booking, the customer pays.
Ticket print: the customer prints ticket after payment.
Register: If a customer is new, he is mandated to register. If he wants to gain access to the system. The
customer supplies some basic information in the registration page. This is mainly to know the number of
customers using the system.
Session editing: the administrator can edit the session any time of the day.
Cinema editing: the administrator can also edit the cinema any time of the day.
2.3. Mathematical model of the system

Getting the total sale amount, the following assumptions are made:
Let available seats be A, where
� = , , …….. (1)
Let the selected seats by customer
� � � � = �� (2)
Where i = 1, 2, 3…n and A > 0
Let the total number of booked seats be
� = ∑�= i (3)
Let Nn be total number of seat in the cinema.
The number of unbooked seats will therefore be
� � �=� − � (4)
Let the total sale per movie be
� = �∗ � (5)
where � is price per movie.

3. Implementation and testing of the design

The online booking system was designed using the PHP 5.5, MySQL Server and Apache Web Server.
Registration is mandated if the user is not yet registered. The structure is such that a registered user is
expected to login to his or her account before entry and from there booking for a movie can be made. The
user is expected to come to the venue with a printed copy of the ticket from the Internet.
User Interface Design
The user interface is such that the users would have a wonderful user experience. The choice of colors,
images and the flow of the site is such that they are designed according to standard patterns. For example, the
system contains a logo instead of the name of the website so that the header would not be too cumbersome;
the top film banners are in a slide bar to make the site look more interesting and dynamic.
The user interface is separated into two, that of the administrator and the customer. The administrator’s
interface which is entirely different from the customer’s interface is used for managing the website majorly.
Below are some screenshots of what the website looks like.

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Journal of Information and Computing Science, Vol. 12(2017) No. 2, pp 113-122 119

Figure 7. Login Page

This login page in figure 7 above is for the user to log into the system in order to be able to access
information and other activities on the website. The registration page for new customers to create an account
is shown in figure 8.

Figure 8. The registration page for the customer

Figure 9 is the homepage which the user will be directed to after successful entry into the website. It
shows the major things which the site entails.

Figure 9. Homepage

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120 Raphael Akinyede et al.: Design and implementation
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Figure 10. Movie details page

The movie details page in figure 10 is for viewing basic information about a particular movie selected
on the page by the user. It displays information such as price, title, details and so on.

Figure 11. Seat booking page

In figure 11, the user after making up his mind to book a movie, is directed to this page above where he
books the particular seat he wishes to sit.
The figure in figure 12 shows the payment page where the payment is done via a third party
organization.

Figure 12. Payment page

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Journal of Information and Computing Science, Vol. 12(2017) No. 2, pp 113-122 121

Figure 13. Movie upload page

In figure 13, the movie upload page is a page for the admin where movies to be shown are uploaded to
the website and the information about the movie is also uploaded alongside it by the administrator.

Figure 14. News upload page

In figure 14, the administrator uploads news related to movies and entertainments to the website, also
news concerning the center is also uploaded to the website.

4. Conclusion
This project implements an online booking system for cinema houses mainly in Nigeria. It can be said
with full assurance that if the system is fully implemented, all the advantages of an online booking system,
such as, time saving, 24-hour working service, access to the service from anywhere in the world, availability
check and instant, collecting all guest payments (i.e. using your own merchant account/payment gateway),
and much more will be achieved.
Furthermore, the full implementation of this project will further improve the booking system of
Nigerian cinemas, even in other areas of life where reservations or bookings are done, and could also revive
the dying movie watching in cinemas, while also helping to cut down cost of servicing extra manpower
needed to run report sorting.

5. Acknowledgement
We will like to appreciate the Federal University of Technology, Akure through the Department of
Computer Science for making the laboratory available for the design and implementation of this work.

6. References
Zozi, Online booking system https://www.zozi.com/advance/blog/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-online-
booking-systems. (2016).
Wikipedia, Computer reservations system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_reservations_system. (2016).

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122 Raphael Akinyede et al.: Design and implementation
of an online booking system for a cinema house

Agianaku I., Design and Implementation of Airline Flight Information System (A case study of Air Nigeria, Lagos
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C. Naomi, G. Claire, H. Ciaran, and Mc, Charlene, Ticket Reservation System for the Millennium Forum. (2009).
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_booking_ process_february2003.pdf. (2003).
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(2014).
P. Ljubica, S. Maja, and C. Tomislav, Online hotel's sales strategies with emphases on web booking. Opatija.
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http://mainwpex.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/HTML-Request.gif)
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/onlinebusreservationsystem-marketopportunities-100622121534-
phpapp02/95/online-bus-reservation-system-in-india-16-728.jpg?cb=1277209034)

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