Hi All,
We have been using Tessitura for 10 years, however I've never had this situation in the past. A presenter is renting our theater for 3 days and having a 3 day performance. They want to sell 3-day passes, reserved seating of course. They also want to sell individual day tickets. They insist this is only one event but it is very difficult to sell individual tickets per day, also reserved seating. Have any of you had a situation like this? How did you handle it? I have some ideas but I'm open for new ideas, too.
Thanks,
Susan
Susan,
This does sound like a fun one. We have not had something exactly like this, but we have dealt with some strange things (and it is more than possible that we will get such a rental in the future), so I likewise have some ideas. I am not sure what your ideas are, but they are probably along the same lines as either of these options which are the ones that occur to me off the top of my head:
1) Sell the whole performance as a 3 performance, fixed-seat package (full 3-day cost divided by 3 per performance). Then, if they are really insistent upon 1 ticket for the "whole" performance, you could do some form of composite ticket for that, otherwise, you could issue one ticket per day (which might actually be easier for the patrons). And that would of course allow you to then sell individual tickets to each individual performance. I suppose the difficulty option with this comes in terms of how to offer it to patrons online as your site might not be set up in a way to allow you to offer a package right next to individual performances which is probably their goal.
2) Create four performances, and place seat kills/holds on the seats for the 3 day-only performances for seats that are sold for the 1 that is the 3-day full performance. This one is less attractive as the hold work is not insignificant. Also, this idea is especially bad if you have to sell the individual performances at the same time as the 3-day full performance. If you only have to sell the individual events day of, this would become MUCH easier. Then you would just have to negotiate people having two different tickets for what is ostensibly the same performance each day, and Finance would have to know about that when it comes to reconciling. The advantage to this option is it allows you to sell the 3-day full performance online easier as a single performance.
I do not think either option is really that spectacular. I lean towards the first one if the website/patron purchase experience stuff can be worked out. I am curious to hear of any other ideas out there.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the advice. I had #1 in mind but I just need to figure out how to make it easy for both online and BO sales. And I'm wondering why the presenter wants reserved seating for a "battle of the bands" type of event. It should be interesting.