Attractions' Pricing Strategies: How to achieve your goals

Choosing the right pricing strategy for your products and tickets is one of the most important aspects of any attraction. In the Attractions Industry, pricing has been an ongoing topic.

Before 2020, static pricing used to be the norm. A simple, and safe way of pricing a service, yet is it the most optimal?

The external environment surrounding any visitor attractions business is constantly changing. Factors such as the pandemic health crisis, or the economic recession and the rise of price sensitivity amongst visitors, made finding the right pricing strategy a must-have.

A suitable pricing strategy goes beyond generating more revenue. It can also become a way of optimising operations and improving the visitor experience. Pricing is also one of the most relevant trends in the ticketing industry and it will only become more important. 

Dynamic pricing: The new norm?

Unlike popular beliefs, dynamic pricing is not just a way of rising prices and scaring visitors away. A good implementation of dynamic pricing can truly drive success in the Attractions Industry by allowing operators to find the best price for different days and time slots. As a bonus, it can also be done in so many different ways.

How can Visitor Attractions choose the right dynamic pricing strategy depending on their goals?

First of all, the key is to make sure your pricing strategy aligns with your overall business goals. Depending on whether you want to maximise potential revenue, distribute visitors more evenly or sell more products, you should choose your pricing strategy accordingly.

Learning from our partners, we could observe the most popular reasons why attractions like theme parks or castles are using dynamic pricing strategies, along with some best practices. Let’s take a look at the following scenarios…

1. If you want to optimise operations

Optimising operations is crucial to guarantee the best visitor experience and making them come back. The key here is to have a clear understanding of how your venue will look on a certain day so you can allocate resources accordingly. 

You could do so by incentivising visitors to buy in advance. Setting up an ‘early bird’ pricing strategy offers visitors the benefit of a reduced price by booking early. For your attraction this results in a better overview of how the venue will look on a certain day or time slot. Depending on whether you will expect more or fewer visitors, you can prepare for the day and offer the best visitor experience. 

This is also one of the many tips on how to optimise your attraction operations and ease the life of your staff given by our partner, Hannover Zoo. 

2. If you want to spread visitor volume

Some days and time slots are more popular than others. Yet, no one likes an overcrowded venue that makes it impossible to truly enjoy the experience. Again, a dynamic pricing strategy can help with that.

What if visitors could “buy first and pay less”, allowing them to have cheaper prices when booking in advance or choosing days that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise?

This pricing strategy takes into account inventory and the number of tickets being sold in a certain day or time slot.  For your attraction, this translates to spreading the volume evenly, while also maximising potential revenue for your most popular days or time slots.

3. If you want to generate more revenue

The visitor experience is influenced by a number of factors such as weather, seasonality or simply past preferences. All of this also can directly affect your ticket price, allowing you to generate more sales, while also enhancing the perceived value of your offer. 

An AI-based pricing strategy works perfectly for that. By defining the importance that elements such as weather, holidays, and seasonality, have for your attractions, the algorithm generates your optimal price for a certain day or time slot depending on these factors. For example, if sunny weather is a crucial factor for the experience at your venue, the price will be optimised to maximise potential revenue on sunny days, while, on less sunny days, it will incentivise visitors with a lower price and increase the number of tickets sold. 

Moreover, this also increases the perceived value of your offering. Different prices on different days help visitors differentiate between the options they have so they can make the choice. And giving visitors choices is another great way of increasing the perceived value of your offerings and generating more ticket sales. 

You also have the choice when it comes to choosing the right pricing strategy for your venue. As long as you make sure that your pricing aligns with your overall strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new and drive the success of your attraction season after season!

If you'd like to get to know more about the topic, or give your venue a boost with the power of dynamic pricing, get in touch with our team. We are here to help you reach your full potential.