Hello everyone,
Our primary theatre season consists of six plays which are initially sold as subscription packages (We use fixed seat packages) and we have three different price zones (A/B/C). Subscribers choose the day of week and price zone to determine their package, ie. Mary Jones attends on the 2nd Wednesday eve performance of each production and sits in an A price zone seat.
For the 2010*11 season we are going to be re-zoning the facility to a four price zone structure. If I ran the Rollover procedure right into the new zoning structure many subscribers would be paying considerably more for their seats than in the current season, if their seats have moved up a zone. Correct, yes?
So here's the issue. The federal/Ontario governments are imposing a new 13% tax (up from previous years' 5% federal tax) that will already increase prices substantially on all theatre ticket purchases. To reward their commitment to the theatre we would like to "grandfather" our renewing subscribers into their current seats but at last season's prices and I am trying to determine the smoothest way to do this. This will apply to renewing subscribers only. New subscribers will be on the new four zone pricing structure, and a different set of price types.
Am I able to do the following:
1) Rollover using current A/B/C zone structure
2) Re-zone the new season with the four zone map. Upon re-zoning will the renewed sub orders maintain their current pricing?
Any guidance or other suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Duane
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