Hi all!
As Universities with free/discounted student tickets, I'm sure we have all faced the problem of a high rate of no-shows. How does your University handle this? Do you let students know their ticket is forfeit up to x amount of minutes before the performance? Do you encourage students to return tickets if they will not be using them? In addition, do you have a standby line at performances, and how do you handle it? I appreciate everyone's input on this as we are currently trying to fine tune our (fairly non-existent) policies and procedures around these questions!
Best,
Olivia A.
Hi Olivia,
One thing we have done at CU is eliminate all "Free tickets for students" (with the exception of performer comps for our shows), as well as any rush or "standby" for performances. The first practice, in our experience, teaches the student to devalue the ticket (and the associated even), while the second encourages poor buying behavior (Last-minute, when we'd rather they bought early).We offer a blanket 25% discount on all our shows to CU Faculty, Staff and Students. When a student group or class wants to attend, we offer a steep group discount (60% off), but still charge at least some money for the ticket. Obviously there are tradeoffs to these practices (particularly if you have a mandate to offer free tickets from a funding source), but we find that even making students pay $5 leads to a substantially higher attendance rate than complimentary tickets.