Hello all!
I'm hoping that someone out there has used Tessie to help break down barriers to group sales.I get continual feedback from group leaders about the percieved difficulty of paying for a group (no one person wants to take on responsibility). Has anyone found a way to "reserve" seats for a group, then allow the individuals to access and pay for their ticket(s)? (Like making a reservation at a restaurant, then showing up at different times and paying for one's own bill.)
Pros: could increase sales by increasing ease-of-use. eliminates one person's total responsibility for group
Cons: if individuals don't pay by a particular date, group size could diminish and the discount could change
Anyone have thoughts?
Hi Lilaia,
These are excellent questions, and I don’t know that I really have the answers. At this point, we have an idea about how we are going to handle this situation, but we haven’t actually encountered it yet. I’m sure that as the program begins to pick up speed, we will have to adapt and make modifications.
We have a custom report that provides ticket sales by group leader. We use the promo code that is generated when the group leader creates the group to determine which sales belong to a group leader.
The idea we are working with is that the box office will monitor the sales using this report. If the group is below the minimum, they will make a judgment call based on a number of factors (how close the group has come to meeting the minimum, customer loyalty/history, sales and availability for the specific performance, etc) as to whether they want to ask the group to pay full price for the tickets. If this is the case, the group leader would be contacted and arrangements would be made to upgrade the tickets. The official policy posted on our website is that the group leader is “responsible for meeting the minimum and for any corresponding ticket fees.”
Thanks for your response Mara, It's such a tricky balancing act. We certainly don't want to alienate groups by being too strict, but we aren't interested in making our group discounts too open-ended either. Here's hoping that all our groups make their minimums!
LilaiaNew 42nd Street/New Victory Theaterlkairis@new42.org 646-223-3009
There was a wonderful service we wanted to use a while back called Wigadoo which was aimed at the groups market. They had a separate website that group members could pay for individual tickets on, which would then generate a one-off pre-pay mastercard for use. This would then be used to pay the group booking without the risk for the groups organiser. It was ideal for smaller groups of friends coming to the theatre rather than larger organised groups but sadly the scheme never really got off the ground.