Many of our contracts have been coming through with multiple VIP Packages with Lifts. Being that the seating for these packages are in two different zones, are for only part of a zone, or they want the seats to be able to be sold as VIP or regular seats, I am having difficulty making it work and being able to extract the information. Right now, I am using Fees for the Lift, which makes me have to use a separate ticket design with a fixed dollar amount for just those seats. Some even only want a certain credit card to be able to purchase for specific dates as well. How do we block all Credit Cards besides Chase or American Express online?
How are others handling the inputting for these type of packages? We have not used Allocations yet, but wasn't sure they would solve my issues anyway.
Needing your guidance,
Bobbie
Bobbie,
So we just started doing some of these VIP lifts this season. Here are a few ideas (I welcome more, as we are looking for any potential improvements as well).
So for the pricing itself, we have built that onto its own "VIP Price" layer, which we then only associate with the specific VIP price type (Single VIP) and only in the specific price zones for which it is valid which makes reporting on the VIP money easy enough since it is associated with a VIP layer type (you may need to create one of those). In order to accomplish the specific price zones, what we did was to take our standard price zone set up, copy it to a new zone map (along with all templates) and then add in two more new zones (just in case there are two different VIP packages) called VIP 1 and VIP 2 that have, by default, no seats associated with them. Upon building each new performance that has a VIP lift on it, we build the performance using this zone map, and then go to that performance using Season Maintenance to change the specific seats that we need to be part of either of the VIP zones. We simply reverse that process if the VIP packages are not selling and we need to put the seats back into whatever "normal" price zone to which they would usually adhere. Through this process, we are able to just use our standard ticket design. We have liked this method as it allows VIP seats to be sold to anyone who wants them and it very naturally and easily limits the seats. You can also use a blanket offer on the VIP price type if you need a ticket limit for the VIP seats. We also have a custom delivery method procedure we use with the addition of a performance content tab item which allows us to restrict delivery method to just "Hold at Will Call" for a chosen price type (Single VIP) when that is required.
If they want the seats to be able to be sold as VIP or regular I suppose you could just make the VIP price type valid for the entire zone in which it is supposed to be located (or some strange combination of the above if you need these to be further segmented still from the "normal" seats). You might need to set up reports to make sure you do not go over your limit on that particular price type, though.
Using allocations can get you there without creating any additional price zones, however you would have to require a promo code to unlock them, unless you have some clever ranking system or something else that will do that for you automatically. Promo codes/allocations are okay for some where there is a big fan club base that is being e-mailed, but if you are just trying to grab every patron you can, you would either need to just post the promo code to the performance page or something like that.
Regarding specific credit card types/issuers, that pretty much is going to have to involve either a custom payment method procedure or web coding of some kind. I cannot think of anything else that will get you there.
We have also started building these two blank VIP price zones into a lot of our new performances standard, even when we hear of no VIP option. When we had not done that and the artists come back a month after we are already on sale and ask about a VIP option, we were left only with the promo code option, so building the blank price zones in from the front allows us that flexibility to just change zones and add in that price layer since those would be the only tickets using that layer.
Also, we have had to do some artist charity fees and album bundle prices on top of all tickets which we have done both as set fees as well as pricing layers. I prefer the price layer method, because there are some weird things that can happen with fees and flex packages.
Feel free to e-mail me off-line if you have any questions about anything I said. I also would love to hear ideas from anyone else out there doing these things. These are ideas we have produced out of necessity this season, and I would love to hear other approaches.
John