Price Zones changing for new subscription season

Hi Duane,

You can’t rezone sold seats, so you are going to have to rollover your subscribers into the new zone structure.  I think there are two options for handling the grandfather prices from there: A.  use extra zones or  B.  adjust prices at renewal.  

For option A you would create some additional transitional zones for the seats that are changing to a more expensive price zone.  So let’s say you are going from A, B, C zones to A,B,C,D zones.  You would also create a A/B zone and a B/C zone.  You would only apply these zones to seats that changed zones.  And then for the renewal price maps you would set the A/B price to B zone price and the B/C zone price to the C zone price.  You wouldn’t need to worry about seats going from C to D as those would be a decrease in price.  On your new subscription price maps you would set A/B price to A price and B/C price to B price.  Then the next season you would rezone again to get rid of the transitional zones.  It’s a little extra setup, but probably the easiest option for communication, the web, and the box office not having to think when they process renewals.

For option B you would roll over everyone into the new prices but adjust them at the time you process renewals.  The easiest way to do this would be to use editable pricing to reduce the price when necessary.  Another option would be to pay for the difference using a dummy payment method, kind of like you are paying for the difference (which maybe finance would like).  The communication factor on this option is more challenging, though, and if you do live renewals on the web it could be difficult and costly to implement the price adjustment.  There is an API method for editable prices, but you would have to code your website to use it, and you would also have to code it identify who should have their prices adjusted (perhaps based on a constituency you put in place, which would also help your box office remember to make the adjustment).

I hope those ideas help.  I think I like option A best, myself.  Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Kevin Sheehan

Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist

Tessitura Network

1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office

ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com

Hello Kevin,

Thank you very much for this input, and I’m pretty sure that I’m following your logic in Option A.  Essentially what is happening with our new zones though is instead of A/B/C/D it is going to go A+/A/B/C, with A+ being our “prime” A seats, A taking over some of the best B seats from before, and the new B consisting of less seats than the old B did.  New B seat holders will benefit from a reduced price as well.  The C Zone seats are not changing at all, so from your description I’ll need a transition zone of A+/A and A/B, yes?  Also, does this change the logic at all?

We do not currently sell subscriptions on the web, but a question then about how this will affect the look of our single ticket purchase page when choosing the Best Available method (we also use SYOS, but this won’t be affected).  Currently a patron chooses Best Available by Zone (ie. Orchestra A, Orchestra B, Orchestra C, Balcony A, Balcony B, Balcony C).  Will re-zoning through your Option A affect this?  i.e. How many zones would show up as options?  I would prefer just two new ones (Orchestra A+, Balcony A+) but am wondering if this would result in four new zones on the page.

Option A does seem like a much better approach than B, as B appears to involve more manual processing on the Box Office staff end, so I would prefer to have as much of it looked after on the set up end as possible.  I’ll be trying this out in TEST by the end of the week and I think I’ll have a much better handle on it now.

Thanks again,

Duane

Actually, I think the logic does change a little.  Because all the A+ seats are former A seats, you don’t need a transition zone for those seats.  Instead you can just set the sub price for all A+ seats to the A price.  The only transition zone you’ll need is for the seats that go from B to A.  Pretty much you only need a transition zone when only some of the seats in a current zone used to be in a different zone.  If all the seats in a zone used to be in a different zone, you can just change the price of the zone.

You are right that this will have an effect on the number of zones listed on the web.  You might be able to make the zone descriptions for the same for A and A/B, so it doesn’t look like they are different zones, but I haven’t tested it.  If you can make the descriptions the same, you are still going to have an extra zone listed, it will just look like a duplicate (i.e. two A zones will be listed).  You can probably filter out the extra choice with some web code, though I’m not sure how complicated that would be.  You’ll have to talk to your web developer.  If you do filter out the A/B zone, constituents will not be able to reserve seats in that zone.  If you don’t filter it out, it will be confusing.  If you select the real A zone, you’ll only be looking at the seats in the A zone.  If you select the A/B zone (which is also labeled A) you’ll only be looking at the seats in the A/B zone.  Unfortunately there is no way to set it up so that when constituents select the A zone it considers both the A and A/B seats.  I think filtering out the A/B zone would be the best option from the communication perspective.  While it will limit some choices on the web, constituents won’t know that, and I suspect the number of people using best seat with a zone selected is relatively small.