At TICKETsrv, we pride ourselves on the advice we give to clients to help them sell more tickets and we regularly see how a strong pricing strategy can help drive sales.
We operate in the agricultural and country event sector which differs from the festival market in fundamental ways. The core audience tends to be families, looking for a sunny day out and they will buy tickets based on the weather forecast. Festival attendees will turn out in bad weather for a sell-out event when they have paid £200 for a scarce ticket, but this is not true for an average family who know full well that they can buy a ticket on the gate after checking the weather forecast. Of course, organisers want early sales and certainty over attendance, and therefore they need to make it advantageous to book early.
We have helped to shift our clients’ perspective away from the concept of ‘discounting’ tickets to ‘loading the gate price’. Our clients can view discounts as “lost” income, however we are helping them to see that it’s actually asking customers to pay for the convenience of choosing when they book.
The Royal Welsh Show broke new ground this year and decided to reward customers who commit to ‘Specific day’ tickets and charge a premium for the added flexibility of an ‘Any day’ ticket. This pricing strategy is common across many sectors, for example when booking flights, train tickets and hotels where you pay more for flexibility and last minute purchases.
We are often asked the best time to end a lower cost advance price. Can you drive ticket sales earlier by raising ticket prices two weeks before an event? There is no single solution to this. We believe a compromise is the answer, offering some level of incentive for all online bookings means you maximise your customer data. Using staggered pricing in the months up to the event can drive advance bookings at what can often be a quieter time for ticket sales.
The holy grail for events is to sell out in advance. We have been working with Badminton Horse Trials for a number of years, helping them to build up their customer database. Many thought it a radical move when they announced that they would be ending on-the-gate sales. However, with a lot of communication, PR and hard work, they pulled it off and sold out in advance.
Content from this article was featured in StandOut Magazine, May 2024.
