Theatres: educate your audience and cut out those last-minute promotions

Like children, sometimes you have to educate your audience a little. If they do something you like, you reward them for it. Behaviour that you like less you want to discourage. Yet many theatres do exactly the opposite with their booking fees and last-minute promotions.

It has been a trend for years. Visitors are deciding later and later that they want an evening at the theatre. Nowadays, we value freedom and flexibility more and more. Booking weeks in advance hardly ever happens anymore. For theatres, this is difficult. After all, they like to have certainty about the occupancy of their shows long in advance. This way, they can decide whether they need to use extra bar staff or cancel a poorly-run show.

Yet many theatres penalise the on-time booking visitor by charging a booking fee. He may pay a euro or two more for giving the theatre security. Not logical.

And what about last-minute discounts given on shows that are not doing as well. It's a logical thought in itself, after all, they want to fill their auditoriums. Such a promotion helps with that. It is an emergency measure with a short-term effect, because the visitor who did pay full price will not be so quick to make a reservation in the future.

Of course, early bookers get something in return. The certainty of a seat. But for performances that are unlikely to sell out, you can hardly call that a reward. Most theatre performances are simply not scarce enough to entice visitors to order tickets en masse weeks in advance.

By the way, in the dance scene, they have known for a long time that such promotions may bring short-term profits, but in the long run you pay the price. There, it is quite normal that tickets for parties at the door are actually more expensive than in the presale.

In the theatre world, people are starting to see the light. "Dynamic pricing" is being experimented with here and there. This phenomenon originated in aviation. Specifically, it means that the price of a product rises as demand increases. For instance, a return ticket to Bangkok may first cost 500 euros but two weeks later the price for the same ticket has risen to 600 euros.

Initial experiences with this in the theatre world seem positive. There are theatres that achieved an increase in their revenues of several percent this way. However, it is important to explain well to the audience what the ticket price is based on. So that the visitor knows that it is in his own interest to be decisive. In aviation, we now find this way of setting prices quite common, I think it is only a matter of time before this practice becomes commonplace in theatre as well.