Host Tom Dawson gathers 5 industry experts to give you the most up-to-date thinking on ticketing, dynamic pricing and accessibility.
Dynamic pricing has been making headlines for the wrong reasons with the recent release of Oasis tickets. Before that, Taylor Swift was breaking records in terms of ticket prices. It's a good time to talk ticketing.
In this episode we discuss everything from what dynamic pricing actually is (and isn't)... to upselling, audience perception, value-adding, demand management, potential new legislation, paths to membership and keeping arts and culture accessible to all.
Host Tom Dawson assembles 5 industry experts (two stand-alone interviews and one panel discussion) to make sure all angles are covered.
Interviews:
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick (CEO, Baker Richards)
Ian Nuttal (TheStadiumBusiness / TheTicketingBusiness)
Panel:
Abbi Olive (Castle Howard Estate Ltd)
Charlie McKenzie (Brighton & Hove Museums)
Matt Thorley (Tate)
Tom Dawson: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Arts and Culture podcast from the Association for Cultural Enterprises, where we dive into the latest trends and pressing issues shaping the cultural sector. I'm your host, Tom Dawson, and today we're tackling a topic that's been making headlines and stirring up debate across the industry.
Tom Dawson: Ticketing, pricing, and accessibility. Whether you're a ticketing professional or someone who's simply been shocked by the price of a gig lately, you've likely noticed the buzz around dynamic pricing. From the record breaking ticket costs for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour to the highly anticipated Oasis reunion, the conversation around ticket prices is louder than ever.
Tom Dawson: But dynamic pricing is just one part of a much larger discussion. How do we, as a sector, balance the need for revenue with accessibility? What is the impact of rising ticket prices on audiences, particularly those who've traditionally been priced out of cultural experiences? And how do we ensure that, while some events might sell for sky high amounts, others remain affordable [00:01:00] and inclusive?
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Tom Dawson: later, we'll hear from a panel of cultural professionals. But first, let's start by speaking to an expert who knows all about the topic. Robin Cantre, Finnick, CEO [00:02:00] of Baker Richards, who specialize in audience and revenue insights, helping organizations to make the most of their commercial potential. What is the difference between differential pricing and dynamic pricing?
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So actually, for years, the whole visitor attractions and heritage sector and so on operated pretty much static pricing, so irrespective of the day of week, the price would be 6, 5 if you're an OAP, whatever it may be, but the price was the same. Differential pricing comes along when you have, for example, Saturdays and Sundays.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Being priced differently to weekdays or the middle of the day, the peak of the day being priced different to the kind of shoulder times. But again, you're setting prices that anybody can go online and see. Okay, it's you know, it's 10 at 10 a. m. and it's 12 at 1 p. m. Dynamic pricing is A fluid form of pricing that is generally used when the demand for admissions in [00:03:00] particular is not clear.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: If you unexpectedly find that a particular Saturday is selling very well because actually the weather is going to be glorious and you're an outdoor attraction, dynamic pricing gives you the opportunity to refine the price a bit, usually within a kind of margin of say 10, 20, 30. 30 percent of the standard on sale price, but it also gives you the flexibility where demand is soft to just drop the price a little bit to see if that generates any additional demand.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So it's most used to just give the ticket seller a bit of flexibility where they can't be 100 percent confident of demand. People will be very familiar, maybe even tired of references to Taylor Swift and Oasis concerts, but I think that's really brought it to. the general public's imagination, those people who don't work in ticketing.
Tom Dawson: Do you think things like Ticketmaster and large scale concerts hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons has given dynamic pricing a bad [00:04:00] name or is there something more inherent? In dynamic pricing that is problematic from a audience and customers point of view.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Well, so there are a couple of things there.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So we did some research a couple of years ago, which showed that lots of people were simply not aware of dynamic pricing as a practice, even on things that do it really extensively, like Amazon, for example, you know, they just just didn't know it was there. That's all changed now. The awareness of dynamic pricing thanks to Oasis and Ticketmaster is much greater, but we've all been in that kind of space on a train or on a bus where we're all sharing the space quite nicely.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Everybody's kind of self regulating their behavior and we're all getting along and then somebody gets on the bus who's playing music on their phone, they're eating smelly food, they put their feet on the seat and they ruin it for everyone. Thanks lads in Oasis, you know, that's Pretty much what you've done for dynamic pricing.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So not only have you introduced it to lots of people who didn't really know that it was a practice, but you've done it in a particular way that it's given the rest of us a [00:05:00] bad name. So, you know, thanks very much for that. So there are no performing arts organizations that we would work with or visitor attractions or anybody like that, who in a situation where you know, you're going to have a lot of demand, you know, you could sell every seat or every ticket 10 times over.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Who would a do dynamic pricing in the first place because you know, that's, that's not what it's there for. It's there to help you refine a price when, when demand is uncertain, but also there's nobody we work with who would be dynamically pricing inventory by 150 plus percent, which is what the oasis on sale did for the in demand standing places.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: There's nowhere that would be selling the last standing places for the same price as premium tickets were initially. On sale and, and really kind of messing with the value proposition in that way. So we are in a situation where recent events have given dynamic pricing, a bit of a bad name, but it's not the form of dynamic pricing that anybody in our sector is actually doing.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So one of the [00:06:00] myths of dynamic pricing is that it's all about charging 100, 200, 300, a hundred percent more than the face. Ticket value what we're seeing in our sector. It's more about kind of leveraging prices based on seasonality time. Is it do you think reasonable to ask cultural organizations to hold back on experimenting with different ticketing types?
When they're under such financial pressure with public backlash. So I think it's much more common for cultural organisations of all types to be dynamic pricing in a range of about 10 percent below to 30 percent above the price initially went on sale with. However, even in that area, we have to acknowledge that dynamic pricing tilts the playing field in terms of consumer rights in terms of, you know, we imagine all of us as ticket buyers, dynamic pricing tilts the playing field in favor of the ticket seller, because only the ticket seller knows by how much the price is going to change what the ceiling is on the price.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick:[00:07:00] When the price is going to change, what the thresholds are, it tilts it all in our favor. And that's some of the kind of the power of dynamic pricing lies in its opacity, because it creates a bit of uncertainty for the consumer. And I do think the signs are that that is increasingly a problem for regulators.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: And it is a problem that is actually very easily solved. We can be transparent about the floor prices, the lowest we will go and the ceiling prices, the highest we will go in a dynamic pricing range, we can be transparent in a ticket checkout process to just make it clear to the buyer that we are using dynamic pricing or plan ahead pricing.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: I mean, one of my recommendations would really be. Don't use the words dynamic pricing for the foreseeable future. You know, call it plan ahead pricing, call it a book early discount, whatever you want to call it. But I think we can make it clear that we're operating that practice. And then the consumer is empowered.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: If the consumer wants to find more information on the website about our pricing ranges and how pricing varies. They can do that, but if a consumer wants to [00:08:00] stay within a kind of hyper optimized checkout flow where they really don't care about how we're changing prices, all they care about is whether the value proposition stacks up in that moment.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Are they willing to pay the price that's in front of them? Then they can still do that. And that's really important, but I do think we're heading into a place where probably we're going to have to expand the information that we publish on websites in particular, that just goes into some of the theory behind how we price and gives consumers that bit of extra transparency.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: And to be honest, I don't think we should wait until that's forced on us as a consumer. I would like that. I would respect organizations that give me that clarity. I think most of us would.
Tom Dawson: And in terms of, again, trying to sort of bust some of the myths around pricing and ticketing, one of the things levied against dynamic pricing is that it makes tickets more inaccessible.
Tom Dawson: What are the ways around that, do you think? I mean, does it preclude Some of the ways differential ticketing, maybe look at discounts for NHS employees for people on jobseekers [00:09:00] allowance, et cetera, et cetera.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Earlier this year, a big ticketing company asked me to write a blog post for them. They said that they wanted to talk about the power of dynamic pricing to generate more income and also its power as an audience development and diversification tool.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: And I said to them, I can't write that because I only believe half of that. proposition. What dynamic pricing is really good at is making more money. That is why it exists. That's its power. And I've always found the claims that it's particularly useful at developing and diversifying audiences to be really pretty weak.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So yes, of course, concession structures remain important. Thinking about who is eligible for a concession and why and how that ties into your Your broader audience development objective. So often, you know, it will be, uh, local audiences, less affluent audiences and so on that you will want to offer some kind of opt out to in a pricing structure, but also it is about the kind of clarity of communication.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: To what extent are you promoting? So, for example, lots of performing arts organizations now. [00:10:00] Do a lot of this attraction to one pound tickets to people in receipt of government benefits. Often the challenge is, are people aware of that? Is that something that you're proactively going out there as part of your audience development to say, we're doing this and we really want you to come?
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Or is it something that you're doing? But burying because actually you're kind of worried about the bottom line. So it's not just about the actual pricing structure, but it is about how people kind of communicate with and engage with their audiences and their, their, their perspective visitors as well.
Tom Dawson: Where do you think people are moving in terms of ticketing? Are they experimenting with different types of pricing variables? What sort of things are you seeing organizations trying?
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So we're years into a big FOMO around dynamic pricing. Now, you know, things that are dynamic sound modern and smart and new and People who kind of sell dynamic pricing software are really leaning into that and trying to sort of build up this sense that if you're not doing it, you're somehow falling behind the times.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: And I've got a real problem with [00:11:00] that because actually it's just not always suitable for every organization. You know, you can make a judgment as to whether dynamic pricing is right for you. And there will be loads of heritage organizations and attractions for whom it is not right. And they should stick with differential pricing, but there is definitely a trend towards dynamic pricing.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: And within that using algorithms to price, if people are going to do that as a business, we help people do that, but we always encourage people to kind of look. At what is the impact on your audience? Who is dropping off? Who is stopping buying tickets as a consequence of that? And are you comfortable with that?
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: But the flip side is there's a desire to have our cake and eat it. The most common thing now that people come to companies like Baker Richardson say is We need to make more money. We need to know how we can push and diversify our pricing structures. But we also want to remain accessible to people who can't afford the higher prices.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: So I think you're seeing innovation at both ends. And that's the kind of the access schemes that we've been been talking about where particularly linked to people in receipt of [00:12:00] state benefits where alongside You're higher prices, you're also introducing ultra low prices. That, of course, raises questions about the people in the middle, and that is why no pricing structure should be locked for any more than a season or a year.
Robin Cantrill-Fenwick: Whether people are changing their prices every day, we're certainly seeing a shift towards people reviewing prices more frequently as they more closely monitor the analytics and the impact of the prices they sell.
Tom Dawson: Next, let's hear from some cultural organisations themselves. I spoke to a fantastic panel of three guests from three very different organisations to find out what their approaches are to ticketing and audiences.
Tom Dawson: Abigail Olive is Visitor Attraction Director at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Charlie McKenzie is Head of Income Development for Brighton and Hove Museums, including Brighton Pavilion. And Matt Thorley is Head of Sales for Tate, with their four sites in London, Liverpool and St Ives. Abby, can I come to you first with Castle Howard?
Tom Dawson: What kind of pricing strategy have you got in place at Castle Howard at the [00:13:00] moment?
Abbigail Ollive: So at Castle Howard at the moment, the year kind of falls into our main season, and then we treat Christmas a bit differently. So I'll talk about the main season, which runs for the house from usually kind of Easter weekend until Halloween.
Abbigail Ollive: Across that period, we have what I call would call quite basic differential pricing. So it's seasonal pricing and that pricing is based on the offer at the different times of year. So during the summer holidays, we'd kind of class that as a peak time. The gardens are in full bloom. Everything's looking marvelous and we have lots of added value.
Abbigail Ollive: Programmed events on as well, whereas maybe in what we call the shoulder months weekdays in May, there might be less kind of naturally occurring in our gardens and grounds and less programmed. So tickets are a bit cheaper. So we do always show the range because we want to kind of be up front about the fact.
Abbigail Ollive: That tickets range from X to Y, and [00:14:00] then people can see how those prices change across the seasons. The other thing we do as well in our pricing structure for the main season is we drop the price after two o'clock. So whatever band of pricing where. Operating within, we always drop to the band below after two o'clock.
Abbigail Ollive: And I think for us, you know, we did an awful lot of research about footfall and when people are coming, it was really dropping off in those kind of later afternoon slots of the day. And I think it's a perception of value. People want to come for the whole day and, and, you know, kind of want to make the most out of that.
Abbigail Ollive: So to try and incentivize and encourage people to consider coming later in the day, we drop a price band and that's worked pretty well.
Tom Dawson: That'd be interesting. You concern that people might look at the price variations on the website and go, Oh, are they doing dynamic pricing? Cause that's become talked elsewhere in the episode about that's become a bit of a dirty word because of Taylor Swift and Oasis tickets and ticket master.
Tom Dawson: And I think [00:15:00] there's a lot of myths swirling around what that is and isn't, particularly in the cultural sector. Is that a factor that you've had to consider when thinking about differential pricing?
Abbigail Ollive: Yes. I mean, simply put, not really sophisticated enough to do dynamic pricing in its true form, where we get a bit closer to that is at Christmas because we price the different tiers based on demand, we show that range of pricing, I suppose, to show.
Abbigail Ollive: Just to be upfront and transparent, whereas with dynamic pricing, the pricing changes often without you knowing it. So we always do try and kind of have a grid or show the price range just to, to make sure. I think it's about building trust often with our visitors and customers and guests who are coming.
Abbigail Ollive: And I think where dynamic pricing has maybe got a bit controversial. You know, people feel like they're being tricked or, or hoodwinked a bit and that the price is advertised at the lowest price often. And then you end up after being in a long queue to buy something, uh, discovering the price [00:16:00] has doubled and then the trust is lost a bit between the.
Abbigail Ollive: Business and the, and the customer, the consumer. So I think we're just always trying to think about how we're upfront actually. And, you know, Castle Howard isn't a charity, but it's a historic building with a huge conservation challenge. So we're always trying to be upfront with our guests and visitors about where.
Abbigail Ollive: That ticket income is going and, and, you know, demonstrating the restoration projects that can only be made possible by ticketing our venue. So price range, going back to your question is, is mostly about transparency, but it's complex, isn't it? Pricing, you know, there's, there's so much research and with limited in a lot of arts and culture organizations with limited.
Abbigail Ollive: team and technology to be able to do that kind of in depth analysis that the likes of Oasis and Taylor Swift I'm sure can do.
Tom Dawson: Well I think that's a really interesting example of, yeah, using ticketing seasonality and peak and off peak times encouraging people to come at those quieter times. [00:17:00] Charlie if I can come to you next at Brighton and Hove Museums and you've got multi site.
Tom Dawson: venues, paid entry. Do you operate a fixed price strategy across all of your sites at the moment?
Charlie McKenzie: Yes, we do. So we did a ticketing review about two years ago now. So again, off the back of moving out of council and become an independent charity, we were able to make our own decisions and be a bit more thoughtful.
Charlie McKenzie: And streamline our ticketing offer. So what we looked at doing was taking away as many of the kind of multi site mix and match options that confused a lot of people. Our front desk was spending more time explaining our ticketing structure than actually gift aid conversion or upselling other offers. So we tried to make a simple, clear proposition for everybody.
Charlie McKenzie: We do have free sites and paid sites. But the paid sites, there is one price, that is the price. And then we offer a resident. Price as well if you live nearby so that resident discount is part of our agreement having [00:18:00] left the council is that you know We still the collections are owned by the people of Brighton and we want to make sure they remain accessible for them But the bigger goal with our pricing structure now is to incentivize membership.
Charlie McKenzie: So rather than offer multi site discounts or add ons The goal is that if you are going to visit more than one site, it's better value for you to become a member. And then we can grow that relationship and build it and we're looking at, you know, lifelong spend rather than one off visits. But again, we also have massive changes seasonally too, so for us, the summer is our peak season with all of the international travel groups coming through.
Charlie McKenzie: Rather than respond to differing demands of pricing, we change our marketing strategy from summer to winter, so summer's very much aimed at those international tourists and large groups, and winter we aim at residents instead.
Tom Dawson: Matt, thinking about Tate, I mean, Charlie referenced membership there, and I would say you've got a very slick omni channel experience.
Tom Dawson: Membership is nice and clear on your website, you've obviously got free [00:19:00] entry to sites, but then paid for exhibitions. How do you manage the pricing structure of multi site venues in different parts of the country as well? Is it based on local demand and local conditions? Or is it about what the tape costs?
Tom Dawson: Group, uh, kind of looking for in terms of revenue,
Matt Thorley: I think it's a bit of a mix of everything. Great point that charlie's just made the ultimate aim is to build that ticketing strategy into membership conversion. Because I think as a, as a proposition for visitors, it's amazing as a proposition for us as Tate, it's a huge thing that supports our financial sustainability.
Matt Thorley: in the long run. But yeah, just talking around ticketing strategy, we operate across the four sites with a program framework, which both informs the exhibitions that the teams program, but also informs the pricing structure that we layer over that. So we will have a range of exhibitions in London that range from 14 pounds to 22 pounds based on factors in terms of how well artists are known in terms of the demand from the public but also the experience that you will [00:20:00] get for that.
Matt Thorley: For example, right now we have the expressionists at Tate Modern, which actually you could spend, if you really want to do, up to three, four hours in that exhibition. But then just across from that is Anthony McCall, which is an experiential exhibition, but actually you're not going to spend more than an hour in that, so that kind of informs the pricing as well.
Matt Thorley: And then there's the more hyper local pricing for St Ives and Liverpool. In St Ives, such as the agreements we have with the local council for the conditions of opening their work that drives pricing as well, so there's a strategy around it. But there's a lot of factors that play into, into that strategy, but our ultimate aim with the strategy is to have a pricing structure that really feeds into the ultimate ticket you can get is the membership to come back as and when you want.
Matt Thorley: And actually, that will give you the overall best pricing model for you as a visitor to come and see the many exhibitions that we'll have on across our four sites.
Tom Dawson: Is ticketing, how much of it is predictable and a reliable source of income? How much as a factor does that come [00:21:00] into to any of your calculations as to a pricing strategy?
Tom Dawson: Yeah, how much is it about predictability?
Charlie McKenzie: My initial reaction is I feel like predictability is kind of out the window these days. Every time you try and forecast and decide what's going to happen in the world, you can guarantee a spanner's going to get thrown in the work somewhere along the way. Yes, we do look at seasonality as an element of predictability in the changing audiences, but how things like visa requirements and travel restrictions and riots might affect, The travel trade and our visitor numbers, who can ever predict that?
Charlie McKenzie: So I think it's definitely a case of plan for the worst, hope for the best. But in terms of our pricing strategy, we look more at ongoing growth and inflation and our overheads and the value of the offer. There's so many factors. And then, you know, if we do find that there's some sort of socioeconomic factor that's influencing visitor numbers, then that's when we'll look at collaborations and [00:22:00] promotions.
Charlie McKenzie: But again, that makes it a really hard balancing act, because when you're doing promotions, you don't want to be viewed as giving too much away, and you don't want there to be a conflict for those who've paid full price versus those who've gotten on a ticket offer. So there's always this constant balancing act of making sure that everybody has a quality experience and feels that what they've paid for it is worth it.
Charlie McKenzie: What it costs, and I guess that's where it comes down to our core offer, which is the visitor experience. So nothing is worth more than someone's willing to pay for it. So our priority remains on delivering an amazing experience and listening to our customers say. However, also, if you ask anybody how much they think something should cost, they'll always ask that it costs less.
Charlie McKenzie: So you have to also even take that visitor research with a pinch of salt.
Abbigail Ollive: Yeah, I think it's interesting when we're thinking about predictability, especially coming out of COVID and in the last couple of years. So we developed our ticketing system, as I'm sure most [00:23:00] organizations did during the pandemic, because you had to book online and there was much more predictability actually in those years.
Abbigail Ollive: immediately after we kind of reopened from lockdown because 100 percent of people were booking online and lead times, I think were a bit longer as well. Whereas now it feels like we've gone back to a bit of a hybrid. So I think about 50 percent of our visitors still do book online and we incentivize online booking because it really helps with our staffing and our operational.
Abbigail Ollive: Models on site pair that with the weather. It's like a really complicated Venn diagram of who's booked online, what the weather forecast is saying, which outlets will open and staff up and which we might shrink down, get that balance exactly right as Charlie's saying, making sure people still have a great time on site and that visitor experience never suffers, but that we're really controlling.
Abbigail Ollive: Costs. And I think there's, there's predictability in our groups market. You know, I'm looking out the window to a very rainy Yorkshire landscape. There's still four or five [00:24:00] groups booked in today. And we kind of know therefore that there's a level of business coming through. So I think, you know, the group business is predictable.
Abbigail Ollive: We also work with some OTAs and sort of online travel agents. We've seen growth coming back this year from international markets, which is great. And actually we've had a really good year. So I know 2024 has been a bit mixed. We programmed a big headline sculpture exhibition for the first time at Castle Howard.
Abbigail Ollive: So Tony Cragg work was on between May and September this year. And our visitor numbers are sort of tracking 10 percent up versus last year in August, particularly was I think it was 23 percent up on the previous August. It still doesn't kind of give you the absolute certainty that that's what you can budget for next year.
Abbigail Ollive: You know, I think it's, it's still pretty volatile out there in terms of 50 percent of people who aren't now pre booking are very much looking out the window, looking at the weather, deciding whether Castle Howard is, is the day out they want. We are quite weather [00:25:00] dependent as well. as many kind of stately homes and gardens are.
Tom Dawson: So what we're saying is the only predictable thing is unpredictability. Which is a fine answer. Speaking of that, actually, Abby, in terms of online booking walk ups, I mean, Cultural Enterprise has conducted a survey of the cultural sector. I mean, we found about 60 percent walk ups versus 40 percent pre booking.
Tom Dawson: That's across the whole sector, different size and types of organizations. Across the uk, we found about 80% of venues charge for at least some of the experience, while about 60% charge for entry to the venue. And of those who charge, 80% are following fixed pricing just under 20%, some form of variable pricing.
Tom Dawson: And of those only about 8%. We're trying some form of dynamic pricing. So if that gives us a bit of context as to what everybody else is doing, Matt, thinking about Tate and booking experience, what are the kind of things you're seeing work really well for you to give that added value to the ticket sale?
Matt Thorley: We saw some really positive moves, especially with [00:26:00] Kusama. where we were offering Kusama exhibition plus lunch plus dinner in the evening and a host of other options. Really big kind of take up from audiences, so we started developing that out into things like Rodin and sketching bundles. Now you're seeing things like afternoon tea that are offers that are business as usual, so you can walk in and book afternoon tea, but actually now we're packaging that up as part of an exhibition.
Matt Thorley: Process as well, so we are really looking to drive that revenue opportunity for us as Tate, but actually it's a real value add for the visitor as well that if I'm coming to Tate. It's a day out. I probably want food with that. I probably want a product to take away with me. So we'll quite often bundle in a exhibition catalog or something similar.
Matt Thorley: So we're trying to really build that value add visitor led product that you can book through our website for me working so closely on it. I'm really in the detail and I am constantly looking at that with the team to cross take for how can we iterate on that? How can we make it even better? Because you'll be seeing that you can only book an afternoon tea at [00:27:00] 2.
Matt Thorley: 30. Whereas actually, if someone wants to come and see an exhibition at 11 o'clock in the morning, how can they make use of that afternoon tea without having a pre prescribed? Timing on everything that they're doing. So we're really trying to build that through. And we're testing out at the moment, a checkout widget.
Matt Thorley: So we've used it over the past 18 months for an audio guide product for a catalog product and seeing positive uptake from it. So we're now working out how can we expand that out? So you can buy multi, multi products, multi experience as part of your day out without us saying you can only do it if you visit at this time.
Tom Dawson: Those venues who take Gift Aid, what are you doing to try and increase those conversion rates, Charlie?
Charlie McKenzie: So we did a quite a lot of training with our team on how to best explain the product and talk to people about Gift Aid. In a kind of transparent and easy to understand way from back office side is quite a minefield.
Charlie McKenzie: There's a lot of different criteria and what is and is not eligible for gift aid. And what we didn't want to do was to have to interrogate our [00:28:00] customers to find out whether or not they are eligible and how it works. All we now ask is where they live and if they would rather give their tax money to us as a charity or to the government.
Charlie McKenzie: And that seems to be quite a compelling question to push them towards. gifting it to us by streamlining our ticket structure. What that allowed us to give our front of house team more time to talk about what that is and what it means and encourage signups. And where it also works well for us is that majority of our summer audiences are international tourists, so they are not eligible, but that's fine because we're also really busy, so we don't want to have to spend the time talking to each individual visitor to explain it.
Charlie McKenzie: Whereas in the winter months, when it's quiet and it's mostly residents, you do have the time to talk about it. So in terms of conversion, our percentage of gift aid conversion goes right up in winter and drops down in summer. I
Matt Thorley: think that's one of the biggest challenges with gift aid is the complexity of it.
Matt Thorley: So actually that human to human interaction front of house is a real challenge during busy times, especially if there's a queue, because it's [00:29:00] quite a complex offer to explain. But if we do it and we do it, Well, the benefit is, benefit is huge.
Charlie McKenzie: Wouldn't it be nice if the government could make the scheme easier to also give it to us rather than take it themselves?
Charlie McKenzie: If only. That's
Tom Dawson: what we're all thinking. Actually, Abi, looking at your website, I was really interested to note there's quite a prominent Chinese flag in your menu bar, and translates it to Mandarin, I presume. Interesting strategy to target tourists from China, and you find that's becoming an increasingly important part of your business?
Abbigail Ollive: Yeah, so pre pandemic, Chinese audiences made up 60 percent of our international visitors, so the majority of our international visitors were from China. It's because very famous Taiwanese pop star got married at Castle Howard put us on the map firmly with Chinese visitors. So China kind of happened to Castle Howard.
Abbigail Ollive: It wasn't necessarily a strategy at the time to go after [00:30:00] targeting Chinese audiences. But once we were firmly on the map, it was a real opportunity to ensure that those people turning up to photograph a wedding venue essentially had a much deeper connection. valuable experience at Castle Howard. So we, we did an awful lot of work on kind of how we welcome Chinese visitors, translation of all of our interpretation.
Abbigail Ollive: We did an audio multimedia guide in Mandarin. And then as you've noticed the websites and kind of associated ticketing partners, we're all part of that strategy. Obviously those numbers reduced significantly for obvious reasons during the pandemic, but we are seeing. growth back, especially from students and, and group visitors.
Abbigail Ollive: So yeah, we've done an awful lot of work in China and with fantastic partners to kind of make ticketing as easy as possible.
Tom Dawson: We talked about earlier the importance of clear communication, transparency and trust. That seems to me as a non ticketing professional, quite key to all of the conversations we've been having that if your audiences are [00:31:00] understanding what you're charging and why they're charging Would you agree that Really clear communication and transparency over pricing is really vital to good customer experience.
Abbigail Ollive: I certainly would. I think, you know, where we're using variable or differential pricing, we want to be clearly demonstrating the most accessible price points as well. So I think. You know, just being as transparent as possible on all the charges, whether it's a car park charge or a booking fee. We haven't, we haven't gone into booking fees, have we?
Abbigail Ollive: But making sure people understand at the outset before they join a long wait line or queue, or, you know, try and buy tickets for something. People understand kind of what it is that is being expected of them.
Tom Dawson: Abby, you mentioned Christmas. earlier and there's obviously going to be key highlights of your calendars.
Tom Dawson: How do you approach Christmas? You've got to manage footfall as well as maximize revenue. How do you approach that?
Abbigail Ollive: Yes. I mean, I think I talk about Christmas every day of the year and it's such a huge, [00:32:00] significant and important event for Castle Howard. And over the past seven years has grown from 31, 000 visitors in two years.
Abbigail Ollive: 2017 to 90, 000 last year. So it's seen incredible growth. And with that has come a lot of going from a one price fits all model to a real differential pricing strategy for Christmas. It is to maximize income. It's also really important for us to use pricing to kind of try and flatten out that demand. So the weekend.
Abbigail Ollive: In December and that week before Christmas, depending on where school holidays fall, we could probably sell five times over. The demand is there and there's very little price resistance. But actually the house itself, the rooms don't get any bigger. The car park doesn't get much bigger. Although we spend lots of money on trackway and tower lighting, the visitor experience can really suffer if we just have an open ended amount of tickets.
Abbigail Ollive: So a few years ago, we realized this, that those. [00:33:00] In demand weekends, we're just getting too busy. So our approach is to have this differential pricing strategy. We've got super peak, peak, off peak, super off peak, and a few things in between. And as a kind of ticketing journey, we try and make it as easy for the visitor to see again, to try and it's to try and push people into the slots.
Abbigail Ollive: That have less demand and therefore the visitor experience will be great. We cap capacity. So for our experience, every half an hour, 150 people can go through. So we kind of time limit it and we cap the capacity. The variable pricing is not only based on. Day of the week or date. It's also on time of the day.
Abbigail Ollive: So I mentioned earlier about Incentivizing people to come later in the day that applies to Christmas as well, and we're really seeing that work So where we've got the peak pricing between one and two for example And then we drop a price band after two We can see that that one to two slot is not [00:34:00] booking as well as the two to three o'clock slot now So people can you know see?
Abbigail Ollive: The price points and make a decision based on what they want to pay. And those people who do want to come on Saturday, the 8th of December and spend the whole day at Castle Howard, then of course you have the 10 o'clock tickets on that particular day are the most expensive peak tickets. We play around with this in a, in a very sort of scientific way.
Abbigail Ollive: We do lots of analysis whilst we're in flight. So tickets go on sale generally for us on the 1st of. August or around that time. So as we're selling tickets, we can have a look at booking patterns and we can make some tweaks. If I can just carry on talking about Christmas, I was really interested in, uh, the afternoon tea chats.
Abbigail Ollive: And that's something that we've over the last couple of years, really embraced those kinds of bookable or purchasable products or experiences embedded within the ticketing. Journey, it was only a couple of years ago. We added that as an option So when you book your ticket to come to christmas at castle howard, you can now choose [00:35:00] an afternoon tea and that Really helped sales and people enjoyed planning their day and knowing what they were going to eat and at what time but this Year, we've taken it a step further.
Abbigail Ollive: Actually. We always have kind of a theme at christmas This year's theme is alice in wonderland. So lends itself beautifully to Mad Hatter's afternoon teas. So we have our, the afternoon tea we've always done, which is in a beautiful hall with a fire, but then we've added an afternoon tea hosted by the Mad Hatter in a secret location.
Abbigail Ollive: So we're kind of renovating what was a back of house area into a public facing area. that we can kind of generate income from. So we've almost doubled the capacities of afternoon tea. And instead of just doing more of the same, we've added in a higher price points because it's a hosted character dining experience.
Abbigail Ollive: And what we're finding at the moment is that they're both selling extremely well. So we did get a few comments kind of the afternoon tea is quite expensive. Adding a more expensive option now makes the afternoon tea sort of standard [00:36:00] afternoon tea seem great value. And there's a market there of people who want the exclusive, even more expensive hosted afternoon tea.
Abbigail Ollive: So as well as afternoon teas, a bit like Matt was saying, we've added retail products where you can buy a bundle of the Alice in Wonderland book and tote bag. And we also, just to finish off on bookable things, we have a charity partner for Christmas every year. Last year's theme was Peter Pan and we partnered with Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Abbigail Ollive: We raised 25, 000 for the charity by having donation as part of the ticketing journey, which was fantastic as well.
Tom Dawson: Thinking about other groups of visitors, Charlie, I'm interested that you have local resident discounts, free carer companion tickets. How important are tickets like that to maintaining accessibility for your venues as well as driving?
Charlie McKenzie: I mean, it's, it's, it's part of our kind of goal as an arts organization is to keep arts accessible because we've got five really different sites, like the [00:37:00] mix of the museums in the group is really diverse and eclectic. So we do have two free entry sites as well. The resident offer, it works really well for us because, but as part of changing the ticket structure, we went actually moved away from having independently priced temporary exhibitions.
Charlie McKenzie: So it used to be that there was one entry price. And then you'd pay again for the temporary exhibition. So residents would get free entry, but then they'd have to pay for the temporary exhibition. And what we found as a result of that was that residents were coming in and looking at the free parts. But holding back from investing in the full experience because it's a different kind of mindset and a different mentality about looking for a free day out or a paid day out.
Charlie McKenzie: Once we move to the all inclusive ticket price, so that everybody buying a ticket gets access to everything in the building. Residents pushed back on that for about a day. People arrived and went, Oh, it used to be free and now I have to pay. But the second we explained the value they were getting from that ticket, they understood that, they were like, [00:38:00] Wow, that's actually great.
Charlie McKenzie: You know, it equates to something like 50p a month for an annual pass to come in. And in that time, you could see two or three major temporary exhibitions, as well as repeated visits to the museum. to the main collections. I mean, for us, it's great for footfall and to engage with that local community. But again, the priority goal is to make sure that everybody has a quality experience and understands the value of that experience.
Charlie McKenzie: And I think that's Something we in arts organizations are always a little bit guilty of is that we feel slightly bad about charging people for money to engage with our offer because in a perfect world, yes, we'd all be free entry and we'd all be funded excessively and be able to put on amazing shows and let everyone come and look for nothing.
Charlie McKenzie: But the reality is we just can't afford to do that. You know, we have to more and more operate as a business, look after ourselves and generate our own income. So for us, our local residents are the ones who have the best lifelong giving potential for us to build that relationship with. So to incentivise them to begin [00:39:00] that journey, to bring their children in with them, to make going to museums part of their normal life as they grow up.
Charlie McKenzie: That's the more important longer term goal for us.
Tom Dawson: That's a really great point and I'm really interested in your idea that we're a little bit too polite and apologetic. about charging for things. Do you think that's holding the sector back in terms of experimenting with ticketing? I mean, looking at the results of our survey, there's clearly scope for people to try more differential experimental type of ticketing.
Tom Dawson: Do you think we're maybe need to be a bit more innovative as a sector?
Charlie McKenzie: I think we're learning. We all know that What pushes people to spend more is the full immersive experience on a visit rather than a passive experience. That's what people want. That requires investment from our side. So it's the usual circular story in the arts where there's no funding available to create that new experience to then charge that premium price point on it.
Charlie McKenzie: Where does the investment [00:40:00] come from to build that offer to then justify the higher price point? So that's why I think we are all experimenting with. smaller add ons and upsells and premium products where we can make the most of what we already have.
Matt Thorley: And I think there's a growth, if I'm looking at it from the art sector, there's a growth where we need to keep pace with or at least learn from what they're doing, because particularly in London, I assume it's in other cities as well, you see places like over the river from Tate Modern last year, there was the Balloon Museum, which, use the term museum, actually, It was very much an experience led balloon bouncy castle design walkthrough experience where you could interact with the different, different pieces.
Matt Thorley: And you, you visit there, you've paid well over 30 pounds. They've got offers to incentivize you for pre booking and signing up for a mailing list. It's full of families because the kids can jump on things. They can crawl around in ball pits and whatnot, but actually we need to, look at what they're doing and innovate, because actually, although they're not [00:41:00] direct competition, they're not an artwork on a wall from four or five hundred years ago that is a real piece of history.
Matt Thorley: But actually, they're the ones that we're competing with essentially for the same audiences. They want to be in. The capital, they want to experience essentially artwork, but as a family, they want their kids to run around and have a good time and spend their money. So actually, what are they doing? What's their pricing model?
Matt Thorley: Why are families spending almost 35 per person? Whereas actually, we're 15, 20 cheaper than those per person, but they're not coming to us. So actually, what's the learning? How can we innovate? How can we compete in that market? Where actually, I think the biggest thing that they've got over us is probably the marketing spend.
Charlie McKenzie: I think it's a positive though, that they're pushing us to innovate, because we're never going to be inauthentic. We're still going to do something that connects to our collections and our core experience. But it's certainly, prompts us to think in different ways about how we can maximize the assets we have.
Tom Dawson: Well, I think that's a really good point to draw our [00:42:00] conversation to an end. Abbie, Charlie, Matt, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you. Thank you. Now, let's round off the episode by talking to another ticketing expert. This time, someone who regularly works with venues outside the cultural sector and across the world.
Tom Dawson: I sat down with Ian Nuttall, the founder and CEO of both the ticketing business and the stadium business, to get another perspective. What are your thoughts on dynamic pricing, Ian? It's been in the headlines a lot recently. Has it been given a bad reputation? Is it something that is actually beneficial?
Ian Nutall: Dynamic pricing and what does the term actually mean? It comes in various forms. So essentially we're talking about demand based pricing. Price is able to move up but also down, responding to demand. So it's as an approach to yield management and maximizing the revenue for your events or your venues.
Ian Nutall: It's been around a long time and we're all familiar with it in the airline industry. [00:43:00] We're familiar with it in the hotel industry, but for some reason live entertainment ticketing in particular seems to find it difficult, or at least its audience seems to find it difficult to get its head around. Yet visitor attractions have been practicing it for many, many, many decades.
Ian Nutall: Prices go up on summer days for theme parks, prices go down in the winter when demand is less. So as an approach and as a method. It's been around for a long, long time. I think it's probably in the headlines for all the wrong reasons right now, which is it's the levers have only been pushed in one direction, which is up.
Ian Nutall: And in particular, I think, you know, the backlash is very much about was there clarity of information at the outset. So if I'm in a queue and I'm waiting for hours and hours to buy something and I've been told. That what the price will be I don't expect to get down that queue having waited hours and hours to be then told no That thing was not available and only these things are available.
Ian Nutall: I think that whole queue [00:44:00] management process is, is another fascinating area to look into because could we have done more to entertain and engage people in the queue and actually inform them so that they're not wasting their time if they don't want to spend 300, 400 pounds on a ticket. And for those that do, they're happy to stay there in the full knowledge that when they get to check out, that's the price.
Ian Nutall: Yeah, dynamic pricing comes in many forms, like any form of pricing. And I think it's getting a bad rap at the moment for kind of, I think, mismanagement of communications really around what's available and what's for sale. And I think that's probably where the government's going to push on transparency.
Ian Nutall: The advertising standards authority is pretty clear about these sort of things. And of course, we've moved away in an industry where we used to publish ticket prices. We used to put them up saying, you know, seats in the store start from, you know, 13 pounds. Nobody actually has a published ticket price anymore.
Ian Nutall: They have a range of prices depending where you're sitting, which day of the week you're going, matinee, evening, sunny, rainy days, school holidays, peak demand. So we could have a [00:45:00] whole podcast on pricing, couldn't we Tom?
Tom Dawson: We could. Talk to other people already about transparency and communication. That seems pretty key to me then, to getting this right.
Tom Dawson: informing. Your audience throughout the process. I mean, would you say that's right?
Ian Nutall: I think if you want to treat customers fairly then information along the buying process is essential and Transparency, I mean no one wants to be hit with fees at checkout No one wants to be surprised with compulsory bolt ons, but everyone is familiar with a basket approach now to buy buying a couple of tickets or a family package and it's no surprise to be offered parking or anything else on top of that insurance and what have you
Tom Dawson: in terms of maybe the legislative direction do you think there's going to be more stringent requirements Sellers in the future then
Ian Nutall: try not to get too political here I think there was an expectation that maybe an incoming government would be more [00:46:00] radical than it's probably going to be I suspect it will be like a lot of government legislation slightly Watered down slightly well meaning and not necessarily fit for purpose.
Ian Nutall: We might see some more tightening around publishing prices, making sure that they are available at the point of purchase, that sort of thing. I think resale, it's a hugely problematic area in the market. It comes down to the fundamental question. What is a ticket? You know, is it a product? Is it a key? To access an event or an experience, or is it actually a legal contract between a buyer and seller that comes with terms and conditions and things?
Ian Nutall: And of course, all of us in the industry know it's the latter, but there are those who view it as a product. You know, I've bought this chair from Ikea. I now want to sell this chair from Ikea. But if I do a contract with you, Tom, and I then sign on to a third party, That's a very different set of legal challenges and we're seeing T's and C's being [00:47:00] rewritten quite robustly now to block out resale and unauthorized resale and equally a whole new tech stack and a new cultural approach between events rights holders to get a slice of that secondary market.
Ian Nutall: So when there's a high demand item, you know, they want to put it into back into an official resale channel if someone can't go. So I think we'll see a bit more flexibility around ticket exchange and ticket resale through official channels and a tightening up of advertising promotional offers. And.
Ian Nutall: Probably something within that booking checkout flow trying to make it fair for everybody
Tom Dawson: you work across lots of different Sectors and industries as well as arts and culture. Are you seeing anything from? Stadium businesses and other areas that you think maybe the cultural sector could learn from in terms of innovation When it comes to ticketing,
Ian Nutall: I think there's lots of crossovers.
Ian Nutall: I think there's lots probably, um, that the sports sector could learn from arts and cultural enterprises in terms of [00:48:00] building and engaging communities, to be fair, plenty of sports teams out there that do a very good job of misinforming and upsetting their fans. Whereas, um, arts and culture does a much better job of being inclusive and communicating as a generalism across the board.
Ian Nutall: Post COVID we've seen it. Yeah. And a massive move to cashless. We've seen the massive move to mobile digital ticketing. Yeah. We're now at that point where football season ticket holders think nothing of having their ticket on their mobile, their wallet for the match on there, joining up those data points within a stadium environment becomes hugely important.
Ian Nutall: So the ticket really is a gateway to a communications platform around the event experience. And then it's not just a transaction for a QR code. It's then a platform for messaging pre event during the event, post event. Be that through an app or be that through a mobile phone or be that actually through some of these digital ticket delivery methods and now actually, you know, a messaging app built into them.
Ian Nutall: So we're seeing that [00:49:00] staffing HR is difficult. We're all struggling to find talent post Brexit and post COVID we're short of hands in peak, so I think the rise of automation is inevitable. So live chat, chat bots. AI within that space to help with peaks of demand is certainly something the sports team has embraced.
Ian Nutall: Ticketing structures historically haven't moved on much from sending out a bunch of FAQs and hoping people read them. We're still looking in certain sectors, one in four. Ticket sales generates a customer service issue. So if you sell 4, 000 tickets, you are going to have a thousand customer service issues.
Ian Nutall: So how are you going to manage that? A call center is a historic way. These days it's send out an FAQ and hope people don't contact us. And you know, there's plenty of websites that hide behind no contact forms. But if you can put a chat bot in there, if you can put some kind of automation. To the service side and retain that customer's interest in your experience for your cultural offer.[00:50:00]
Ian Nutall: That's going a long way to retaining that. What else should we talk about? Loyalty. I think sports teams do a great job in terms of loyalty across a fan base, despite winning or losing. It doesn't always happen within arts and cultural enterprises. You know, you have a bad day or a bad show, the audience goes off and talks about it.
Ian Nutall: For some reason, sports teams can lose and keep losing on the pitch, but people keep buying tickets for them. So, the pressure's on, I think, on your membership. In some ways,
Tom Dawson: the digitization of ticketing is really interesting, and I think an opportunity for a lot of cultural organizations. Some people are certainly already doing it and are quite far down that path.
Tom Dawson: But as you say, it's a, it's a communication tool, but it's also a data gathering tool. So that people can understand their audiences and a greater depth they've never been able to before. And so for cultural organizations, which yes, have to balance income generation from ticketing, but also accessibility, probably quite an important.
Tom Dawson: I just wondered, you mentioned loyalty. I mean, in terms of recommendations for how people can increase loyalty, and then particularly for cultural organisations, [00:51:00] that's often converting to membership and year round ticketing options. What sort of things are you seeing people doing to improve those conversions?
Ian Nutall: Loyalty, hard won, easily lost, right? I think start with the basics. Do you say thank you to everyone who's come? Do you give them a reason to communicate with you? Is there a prize? Is there a reason to come back? And selling annual memberships, I get it. I've done it a number of times at places. But then when I haven't used that membership value, I think I've wasted my money.
Ian Nutall: And that creates a bad feeling. So it might be six, nine months down the line when I find the cards at so and so castle or so and so discovery center. And I think, God, they got me. I don't feel bad about it, but I just think there's a window there between the upsell at the event and the experience on the day.
Ian Nutall: I had a great day with the family. My daughter wants to come back. I sign up. Then there's this window and I, I've not experienced anyone else reaching back to me saying, Hey, we'd like to have you come back. You signed up. How can we make you use that membership? So communicating [00:52:00] to lapsed members or perhaps people who have signed up and haven't engaged.
Ian Nutall: Let's get them out. I think. Also refresh the offer, give people a reason to come back and come back again and again. And I think there's probably some economies of scale in terms of joining up memberships across a city, a town, a destination. Again, sharing that data, building that you're not really competing for the out of town visitors on the day you're competing for them to come back.
Ian Nutall: Your recent research was eye opening, perhaps not surprising, but very useful, that secondary commercial incomes are vital. In arts and culture, we are in a situation in the country where there's very little, if any, public sector money swilling around for arts and culture, and it seems, sadly, to be moving further and further down the agenda.
Ian Nutall: Perhaps it's very difficult to put that across when we need hospitals and schools and all kinds of other priorities on the public purse. Well, I think there are still huge untapped revenue [00:53:00] streams for arts and cultural organizations and, and the creative souls within them. That's perhaps what the sports sector lacks is that creative thinking to create new experiences, to create new event types.
Ian Nutall: That's been the mainstay of your business. And I think that's a reason for hope.
Tom Dawson: That's a good point to leave it on and also remember that there's some opportunity for cross cultural learning there, so maybe that's a future episode to look at. Thank you for talking to me, Ian.
Ian Nutall: Delighted to be here.
Tom Dawson: So there you have it.
Tom Dawson: Everything you wanted to know about ticketing. Simple, right? Right? Well, anyway, thank you to all my guests and our sponsors, King Magor. If you liked the episode, please subscribe to the Arts Culture podcast on Simplecast, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. See you next time.