Joseph Thornley of Thornley Fallis fame posted something very interesting this morning about charging for attendance to Third Tuesday, and as an event organizer I wanted to add my thoughts via a blog post.
The problem
Like Third Tuesday, we are seeing a large number (40-50%) of attendees registering for our events, and then not attending. While we certainly don’t want to discourage people from coming out to our events, we also feel that those who register and then don’t show up are preventing those who WANT to attend, but cannot because tickets are “sold out”. It also causes us to spend additional money on refreshments based on attendee registration numbers, only to have those refreshments left over or consumed in great amounts by those attending. Most people have been very diligent about telling us that they cannot attend and that we should release their ticket (thank you if that’s you!), but sometimes this doesn’t happen. While we certainly aren’t faulting anyone for not doing this, it’s an issue we felt we should raise given it’s frequency.
Third Tuesday’s solution
I have to respect TTT/TTO’s solution of charging for attendance. Event design and execution is a time-consuming and thereby, expensive process. I personally spent 6 weeks organizing, marketing and promoting the iPhone Application Development workshop, as well as purchasing various goods and services (venue, catering, etc) to ensure the workshop went smoothly. The goods and services purchased were based on the numbers on that we had for registration. A number of people didn’t show up for various reasons (work deadlines, previous commitments, etc), resulting in increased expenditures. Charging a nominal fee for a community event makes sense if there is a financial investment that needs to be undertaken. I fully back Joseph’s statement: “If you charge people a small amount, they’ll place a higher value on their commitment to attend.”
Our solution
We have played with a few different methods of eliminating no-shows, each with varying degrees of success. We are considering the implementation of a similar solution to Third Tuesday’s, but we wanted to get your thoughts on how it would be most effective (ie, where the money would go, how much to charge, etc). Post up your thoughts in the comments below ↓ or hit us up on Twitter. We’d love to hear what’s on your mind!
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