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No Shows and Standby Lines

Olivia Anderson
$organization

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.

Parents
  • $organization
    I’m actually pretty curious about this as we have similar issues. I hope you will keep us updated when you see the results. My experience is that free tickets have led to empty seats in key parts of the house where paying patrons may otherwise rather be seated. The students just have “something come up” or something more interesting to do in the moment and since there was no buy-in, there’s not risk, and they can just not go.

    It’s a frustrating issue, but one we’re trying to figure out as well.



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  • $organization
    I’m actually pretty curious about this as we have similar issues. I hope you will keep us updated when you see the results. My experience is that free tickets have led to empty seats in key parts of the house where paying patrons may otherwise rather be seated. The students just have “something come up” or something more interesting to do in the moment and since there was no buy-in, there’s not risk, and they can just not go.

    It’s a frustrating issue, but one we’re trying to figure out as well.



Children
  • $organization in reply to Jon Reynolds

    This is one of the key reasons why we've moved away from free tickets. It took some convincing with the stakeholders who advocated for free distributions, but we tracked NSCAN attendance rates of seats that we knew were giveaway comps through price type. After we were able to present evidence to groups that less than 40% of free tickets were actually used in the hall, our stakeholders were much more willing to experiment with an "almost free but still a small cost" tickets, such as a $5 minimum. Those performed much better for us. While we had fewer overall students buying tickets than free tickets issued, we had a 90%+ use rate on the tickets.

    The only free tickets for students we still do is a specific program for string music majors who want to attend our professional string quartet. Those tickets are heavily managed (there are only 10 per performance, and we have many more string students, so they have to sign up), and the faculty who manages the distribution of the tickets receives a report of who did or did not use their requested ticket after the show. If a student passes after requesting a ticket, they're not allowed to use the program again without a one-on-one conversation with their primary instructor. The strict administration works extremely well, and we rarely have a seat go unfilled.