We currently don't have any fees on our events, but we are looking into beginning this process. We have many free events that happen here. Do any of you have fees on your free events? If so, how much is that fee and how did you come to that conclusion? Have you had any pushback?
Depending on the event (and who's running it) is how we decide what free event gets a fee.
When we DO charge a fee for a comp ticket we usually stand strong on $5. When I introduced this fee 5 years ago we had patron questions, and for us they were simple to answer "As a not for profit theatre company this fee covers the cost of processing your reservation through manual labor and our ticketing system". This worked for well for us, and made sense to a lot of patrons. We've not had any other questions like that come up since we initiated the fee.
We chose $5 because our research showed that it was just enough money to part with, but seriouse amount of money that was a subsantial loss if the patron didn't show up for the event. We also recognized the fact that if a party of 2 or 4 were reserved it was a large enough investement to the patron to have them guarentee their attendance.
I'm interested in the comp tickets....who do you typically offer comps to? Ours are usually only the Artist or our Center Staff, so charging a $5 fee seems like it wouldn't really work. Do you have a separate comp fee for the Artist or your own ticket staff?