Chrissy wrote:
> A similar question: what else in our culture do you get for a discount if you
> arrive after the start >time - concert? movie? baseball game? college course?
> yoga class? childcare? lap swim at the Y? >massage? (I'm coming up empty.
> Are there any such things?)
If you arrive at a stage show at the end of intermission you don't have to
present a ticket
and you can take any open seat. (And if somebody else is supposed to be in
that seat they
probably have their stub.) I've read several memoirs of Broadway performers
who couldn't afford
to buy tickets before they got their big breaks but saw the second acts of a
bunch of different shows,
some of them many times. So that's free if you arrive late enough.
Airplane ticket pricing varies depending on how far in advance you purchase,
and it doesn't just go up. Fares purchased far ahead are often more expensive
than fares purchased 45 days ahead. (Obviously, not the same thing as selling
you a half-price ticket after the plane has taken off.)
There are an assortment of goods and services that get cheaper as it gets close
to too late to sell them at all. (Eg, day-old bread, cabins on cruises,
theatre tickets via half-price sale or student rush, same-day hotel rooms via
hotwire or priceline.)
>I've heard people say, indicating it was problematic, "Some people (who
>arrived late) paid full price >for only 4 dances." Any perspective on that?
I think there's several questions in play here:
- What is the profit-maximizing pricing scheme
- in the short term (that is, for tonight)
- in the long term (does generating good will through free admission build
the community and
eventually produce more revenue?)
- How much are we concerned about giving poor value for money?
- How much are we concerned about giving people who can't otherwise afford to
dance some accommodation?
- How much are we concerned about getting the most recompense for the
band/caller?
- How much are we concerned about upsetting full-price payers with
accommodations?
- What is logistically feasible?
(In the theatre ticket world, people are often willing to pay full price even
though they know that tickets will probably be on sale for half-price that same
day, because they want the certainty of knowing they'll see the show they
wanted to see. Goldstar, which sells discount tickets long ahead, still
doesn't let you know which seat you're buying until you pick up your ticket, so
the availability of these discount options doesn't destroy the full=price model
and doesn't usually upset the full-price people.)
I think the interplay of the answer to all those questions has to determine the
policy for each particular dance series.
That said, on the one hand, nobody held a gun to the head of the person who
paid full price and danced four dances; they paid the money, so it must have
been worth it to them to pay the money. (And in my Scout House story, I would
have paid the money for one contra and one waltz-but I sure liked not having
to.)
-- Alan
