Hi all,
I'm wondering if anyone has put into action or at least considered any new pricing structures for modified, "socially distanced" events? If so, what do these structures look like? Have you considered lowering and raising prices? Adding more Price Zones or reducing Price Zones? Absorbing fees into ticket totals or keeping fees separate?
Any ideas you have on this topic would be much appreciated. In-person performances don't look like they'll be happening anytime soon for our organization, but we would like to look ahead and consider differently possibilities for a hopefully not-too-distant future.
We did a Baker Richards Patron Preference Analysis last year in planning launching social distant performances in Nov last year and the beginning of this year. It was a huge eye opener for us. We also had an additional few questions on the appetite for digital and the prices people would be willing to pay. It worked really well for our Dec 2020 and Feb 2021 performances. Wrt zones we sold into GA zones and allocated seating 48 hours prior to the performance. Unless you are using a seating algorithm it can be a bit of work but the feedback we got was great. We got rid of fees starting 2021. Finance hate them, patrons hate them, it just wasn't worth it for us especially with our price changes. If you need more info on our socially distanced seating I'm happy to talk further.
Hi Heath,
Thank you for this insight -- I've shared it with my team. Selling into GA and then assigning seats before the performance is definitely something we're considering. Good to know about fees, as well. Did your prices go up significantly? Is that why fees were done away with?
Thanks,Taylor
Our prices did change a fair bit but of course we wanted to keep our accessibility. We changed in line with the feelings of our audience and tried to include ALL our audience (ie: lowest and highest price). We sold out of our bottom price about the same time as our top which indicated to me that we were getting the mix right. Here is the link to the Baker Richards blog post https://www.baker-richards.com/insights/emerging-in-a-position-of-strength/
This is really helpful, Heath -- thanks again!