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
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.
Kevin Sheehan
Documentation & Learning Resources Specialist
Tessitura Network
1 888 643 5778 ext 329 Office
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
Kevin,
Yes, of course, for renewing subs in the new A+, set to A pricing, this makes sense.
Thank you for confirming my suspicions regarding the web/single tickets sales/# of zones. We just introduced SYOS this past season and the majority of bookings are happening this way, so I am going to present your idea of filtering A/B seats to our senior Tessitura team, as I do not see this adversely affecting sales. As you indicate, this probably makes the most sense from a communication perspective.
Thanks again, and I will keep all informed on our progress.
Duane