Leisure parks: Structuring ticketing to smooth out attendance

As is often the case in the world of Revenue Management, it’s the leader who sets the pace. A few months ago, Disneyland Resort Paris introduced dynamic pricing for its ticketing. This is not a global novelty: many players in Europe and the United States were already using it, a direct legacy of airline industry practices.

Capacity less constrained than in the hotel or airline industries

However, dynamic pricing remains relatively underused in leisure parks, mainly because capacity is not fixed, unlike in a hotel, an airplane, or a theater. Its benefits may therefore seem more limited. In reality, capacity is indeed constrained (by a customer satisfaction threshold unique to each park) and it is reached except on a few very specific days of the year.

In France, there is still some caution around this lever. Fortunately, Revenue Management is not limited to dynamic pricing, neither in leisure parks nor in other open-space sectors such as zoos.

The challenges of Revenue Management in leisure park ticketing

The challenges of RM and pricing are manifold: as in the rest of the industry, leisure parks offer a wide range of ticket products across a variety of sales channels.

To structure pricing effectively, several key questions need to be addressed:

• What price gap should be set between tickets purchased on-site and those booked online to encourage early purchase?
• How should Undated tickets, often valid for a year, be positioned against Dated tickets, which are mostly non-changeable and non-refundable?
• What role should a Dated and flexible offer play?
• What discounts should be applied for multi-day stays, multi-park visits or group purchases?
• What reductions should be offered for children, families or groups of 4–5 people?
• How can Distribution be managed intelligently without cannibalizing direct sales?

Attendance management: a central challenge for outdoor attractions

One of the major challenges in outdoor attractions is managing attendance. Too many tickets are sold as Undated or at the gate, creating a double frustration:

• A lack of visibility and forecasting capacity for daily attendance, due to a relatively small base of dated reservations. This makes it difficult to properly staff the park (shops, restaurants, etc.) and manage revenue.
• A significant drop in attendance on rainy days, resulting in high dependence on the weather.

However, volume-related challenges are greater here than in other sectors, because the marginal cost of an additional ticket is almost zero and ancillary revenues within the park are significant sometimes nearly as much as the revenue generated by ticket sales themselves. Effective pricing must therefore encourage customers to book and attend, even in the face of uncertain weather.

Encouraging Early Booking: dynamic pricing and early booking strategies

If the price is the same at D-10, D-3, or on the day itself, why take the risk of booking early?

Dynamic pricing directly addresses this issue, but as a first step, an Early Booking mechanism can be just as effective. For customers willing to commit early in exchange for a lower price, it is a highly efficient approach.

Pushing the logic further, some price-sensitive customers who are ready to book early may still need or want flexibility to deal with unpredictable weather or changes in their personal schedules.

For these customers, a Flexible Dated ticket can be offered, allowing date changes. It would be priced higher than a non-exchangeable, non-refundable Dated ticket, but remain more affordable than an Undated ticket, which is often unreasonably priced in low season because it is usually sold at a fixed, non-seasonal rate, especially for works councils, ticket resellers or online players.

In practice, this Undated ticket often fails to fulfill its intended role. It becomes a substitute for the Dated ticket when the latter is no longer available a few days before the visit. This awkwardly mirrors the hotel industry’s NANR pricing logic, where non-amendable, non-refundable fares expire at D-3 or D-7.

Yet an Undated ticket is meant to be purchased for use at any point during the year, not for the next two days when the customer already knows they will visit. Even more paradoxical, when only Undated tickets remain on sale and the weather forecast is known, parks end up offering almost exclusively this type of ticket. Over the long term, few Undated tickets are sold, while in the very short term, they are often the only ones sold.

Conclusion

Managing dynamic pricing or Early Booking mechanisms, adjusting seasonal pricing, launching promotional offers, handling discounts, setting the right price gaps and indexations, applying price degressivity, segmenting demand with tailored pricing conditions and defining expiration rules for certain tickets are all levers that play a role in the complex world of leisure park ticketing.

It is a sector that is hiring and modernizing, making it an excellent alternative for Revenue Managers looking to broaden their experience beyond the hotel industry.

Keywords: amusement parks, amusement park ticketing, revenue management, dynamic pricing, attendance management, demand smoothing, dated tickets, undated tickets, early booking, pricing strategy