We have a recurrent problem in which a program may sell out well in advance, but come the night of we have a sizable attrition rate, as well as newcomers seeking tickets on the day of (often knowing it is "sold out"). I'm curious to hear best practices and ideas for how best to navigate this.
Here's a rough run down of our current strategy:
- All internally held seats are confirmed or released by 48 hours prior to event (and any patrons seeking tickets are advised to check back in at that time).
- We keep a small number of additional tickets held for House Management to release for sale on the day of, in the event that we seem to have large attrition and we have ticket seekers (we have a ratio set up where if ___ number of ticketed patrons have not arrived by 10 minutes prior, we release ___ of these held tickets for sale). These HM tickets don't coincide with specific seats, but are additional tickets beyond actual capacity. This gives us roughly 10 seats to free up at the performance if we have walk up ticket buyers (usually this is enough).
Because of the nature of our facilities and entrance to the museum, keeping a running wait list is difficult, so we don't do that.
I'm curious to know if others have similar issues and what you've done to creatively solve them. Our two main problems tend to be the percentage of attrition and the concern that we're turning away patrons from a "sold out" event but end up having seats for them.
Any thoughts appreciated!
JJK
I can't speak to filling a partially sold theater at the last minute--but we do send out pre-performance e-blasts, usually the day before curtain. For Sunday performances, we send the reminder on Friday, because so many of our e-mail addresses are at business domains.
This effort helps. When we started, many patrons thanked us for the information (we include start time, free lecture information, a link to the cast/synopsis information, parking/traffic updates). We often get a response from a couple of patrons who have forgotten that they have tickets.
We don't have e-mail addresses for many (from a third to a half) of our patrons, and not everybody opens our e-mail for those for whom we do have addresses, so this is an imperfect solution--but better than nothing.
Lucie
Hi John,
We have a similar practice in place about selling into performances that are sold out/at capacity, but we sell these right when the ticket office opens. We sell "Standing Room" tickets to address day of ticket requests for sold out/at capacity performances. Depending on the directors wishes/needs for late seating, the lower section of our house is often not accessible for re-seating or late seating at all... So we usually are able to get some of the SR patrons actual seats in the lower section of our house (for act 1 at least...). This covers two bases, it ensures that our section closest to the stage is full, while offering patrons the option to purchase into an otherwise "At Capacity" performance when the ticket office opens, day of.
The SR tickets are only sold in person on the day of the actual performance, to ensure that everyone understands that they will have to stand for the entire production. When/If the HM approaches them and offers them a seat in the lower section it's a surprise and they are usually very gratuitous. We have not had patrons complain if only a certain amount of patrons are re-sat in the lower section. When we do this we do explain again, that the upper section has late seating moments and the SR patrons must never take any open seat, as it is sold, and will cause issues when they arrive.
If you were able to implement a SR section, you would be able to address ticket sales when the reps show up. Then keep your other practice of selling additional ticket right before the performance using your established ratio.
This should work for GA houses as well as assigned seats. For GA Houses, we make sure the ushers say "We are at capacity tonight so please don't skip any seats." This helps out a lot with identifying how many open seats we really have.