Hello out there,
I am trying to make a case to our marketing department for doing away with our per-single-ticket handling fee. Part of the process is hearing from other people who've done away with handling fees and what their experience was.
If your organization has gotten rid of handling fees, any information you could share on any of the following topics would be very helpful. Thank you!
Allison
- Did you heavily publicize your decision to get rid of handling fees or did it just happen, quietly? Do you think the way you decided to go on this had an impact on patron response?
- What was the general patron response? Positive/negative/non-existent?
- Did you notice a difference in response between single ticket buyers and your subscriber base?
- Did you keep a subscription handling fee or other fees, or did you get rid of all fees?
- Did you increase ticket prices directly to compensate for the lost fee or did you use a price layer or additional price map to break out the fee but just have it be invisible to the patron?
- Was there patron push-back to the increase in prices, especially with a subtext along the lines of "I know what you're doing - you're still charging fees and I'm not happy about you hiding them"?
- Did you see an overall increase or decrease (or neither) in income after getting rid of handling fees?