4 tips for offering an optimal VIP experience at your music events

One of the most pop­u­lar trends at music events, espe­cial­ly at fes­ti­vals, is the avail­abil­i­ty of a VIP offer­ing. This allows fans who are more finan­cial­ly secure to access lounge areas and pri­or­i­ty queues, and to ben­e­fit from oth­er exclu­sive pre­mi­um ben­e­fits. What’s more, it enables con­cert and fes­ti­val organ­is­ers to be flex­i­ble and inno­v­a­tive in terms of pric­ing.

At first glance, this seems easy to imple­ment: fans will be pre­pared to spend more to ben­e­fit from a high-end expe­ri­ence, and organ­is­ers will reap the finan­cial ben­e­fits.

In real­i­ty, how­ev­er, sell­ing VIP tick­ets is eas­i­er said than done. These four areas for reflec­tion will help you imple­ment a VIP offer­ing that gives your audi­ence that lit­tle some­thing extra they’re look­ing for, while main­tain­ing the qual­i­ty of your most loy­al fans’ expe­ri­ence as well as your brand image.

Sum­ma­ry

1. Under­stand your audience’s per­spec­tive
2. Set prices through exper­i­men­ta­tion
3. Offer attrac­tive ben­e­fits
4. Be cre­ative and adap­tive

1. Understand your audience’s perspective

Music is an art for every­one — or which at least tries to be. It is there­fore essen­tial that you con­sid­er the nature of your con­cert hall or fes­ti­val when you imple­ment a VIP tick­et offer­ing. Sad­ly, there is no mir­a­cle solu­tion that suits all organ­is­ers — the VIP tick­et offer­ing for a his­toric 600-seat hall will be vast­ly dif­fer­ent to that of an 8,000-seat are­na.

In this con­text, it is impor­tant for organ­is­ers to gauge and mea­sure their audi­ences’ per­cep­tion of tick­et prices and the relat­ed ben­e­fits. Devis­ing a VIP offer­ing must delight the indi­vid­u­als tar­get­ed while not offend­ing the most loy­al atten­dees. Ensure that you do not down­grade the expe­ri­ence enjoyed by your broad­er audi­ence, regard­less of the val­ue added to your VIP ser­vice. The broad­er audi­ence must not feel that they have been aban­doned or that they have received unfavourable treat­ment. Request their feed­back and lis­ten to their sug­ges­tions. How they view your offer­ing is key, so doing every­thing you can to ensure that they are always sat­is­fied will guar­an­tee your organisation’s con­tin­ued suc­cess.

2. Set prices through experimentation

Deter­min­ing tick­et prices is an art, not a sci­ence. Gen­er­al­ly, struc­tur­ing a VIP offer­ing is a high­ly flex­i­ble process, and prices can vary between 1.5 and 2 times the price of a reg­u­lar tick­et. With this in mind, the addi­tion­al price must reflect a real added ser­vice for the spec­ta­tor while also bring­ing in more prof­it for the organ­is­er.

It is pos­si­ble to test sev­er­al vari­ants of VIP tick­ets if you are organ­is­ing a series of events. This will give you an idea of what pleas­es your fans, and what they are will­ing to pay for your event.

3. Offer attractive benefits

Two of the most attrac­tive VIP ben­e­fits for tick­et buy­ers are oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet artists and access to spaces exclu­sive­ly reserved for VIPs. How­ev­er, the set-up of the loca­tion and the arrange­ments for sched­uled artists can make these ben­e­fits dif­fi­cult to imple­ment.

If offer­ing spaces reserved for VIPs doesn’t suit your type of event or your loca­tion, try to think of ben­e­fits that will make the on-site expe­ri­ence more con­ve­nient, smooth and enjoy­able. Ded­i­cat­ed park­ing spaces, an exclu­sive bar and a pri­vate cloak­room are all sure-fire ways to help your VIP tick­ets sell. Think of all the lit­tle trade-offs you’re ask­ing of your broad­er audi­ence, and then find relat­ed solu­tions involv­ing an addi­tion­al price for your VIP atten­dees.

4. Be creative and adaptive

Be cre­ative and play with ben­e­fits and prices. Don’t be afraid to try out dif­fer­ent VIP options. One pos­si­bil­i­ty is to start with a ‘VIP light’ option which includes queue-jump access and an exclu­sive bar for an addi­tion­al 20% of the reg­u­lar price, and then devel­op your offer­ing with a ‘VIP plus’ option which adds a meet­ing with the artists and an open bar for the reg­u­lar price plus 60%.

Most impor­tant­ly, ensure the process is adap­tive. Add, remove and change the ben­e­fits offered depend­ing on the events that are organ­ised. Change their prices, quan­ti­ties and avail­abil­i­ty. This will allow you to gauge what’s pop­u­lar and what doesn’t work at all. No one has yet dic­tat­ed ‘the rules of VIP offer­ings’, so it’s up to you to decide!

Take advan­tage of the trend towards VIP offer­ings to rein­vent your music events and increase your rev­enue. Con­certs, evening events and fes­ti­vals are all being influ­enced by this grow­ing ten­den­cy.

In order to set the prices for your VIP offer­ing and organ­ise every­thing that will make your music events a suc­cess — an online tick­et­ing ser­vice, access con­trol , cash­less pay­ment and CRM — dis­cov­er all of our solu­tions and their fea­tures by click­ing on the but­ton below:

Organ­is­ing a con­cert

Organ­is­ing a fes­ti­val