The strangers of kindness

A family drives up to the entry gate of a historic house: two adults, their six-year-old daughter and 18-month-old son. Dad reveals that they’re refugees and asks to buy £2 tickets which he has seen advertised online – a 90% discount.

When staff ask for proof of refugee status, the dad protests this is discrimination. Perhaps embarrassed to add distress to someone who has already been through so much, the staff quickly back down. “We do this to help people,” they explain, charging £8 to admit a family of four. Dad is placated. “It’s OK, I understand – some people, they try to trick you.” Reassured, they are sent off with wishes for “a lovely day”.

But the family aren’t refugees. Dad is a native Brit putting on a Yoda-esque generic East European accent. The encounter was covertly filmed by the parent in the passenger seat. When shared on a right-wing populist social media channel, it gained 2.5 million views and 7,400 comments. “I’m now a refugee in my own country – do I get in for £2 too?” sits at the head of an outpouring of culture war hostility.

Shortly after, another dad posted about a different attraction that cost £107 for his family of four: “I saw on that if I was on benefits, we could get in for £1 each. Why are normal working people penalised to fund people on benefits?”

These vignettes shouldn’t surprise us. Recent research by Baker Richards reveals that families are feeling the pinch when planning days out. While spend per visit holds up, the actual number of days out is under pressure.

For some, the idea of kindness to the less fortunate now feels strange, alien and unfair.

A zero-sum game?

In a tightening economy, in which people increasingly feel pitted against one another, there is rising grievance. As resentment grows, it seeks a channel and, these days, that is less likely to lead to untouchable elites; instead, we punch down. No matter how little someone has, the message is clear – they’ve taken what they do have from you.

For some, the idea of kindness to the less fortunate now feels strange, alien and unfair. The common explanation in ticketing that higher prices for some cross-funds lower prices for others – that this is social justice – is not landing well in all quarters.

Fairness is highly subjective. One argument for dynamic pricing, beyond financial necessity, is that it’s fairer than traditional concessions. Why offer targeted discounts to specific groups when everyone can access cheaper tickets by booking early?

Recent analysis of a large, dynamically priced season undertaken by Baker Richards focused on the demographics of those who book furthest in advance, usually accessing the cheapest tickets.

We found the biggest beneficiaries of dynamic pricing are those with life stability to plan ahead, people with transport certainty and spare cash to buy tickets months in advance. The Office for National Statistics calls these segments things like ‘Established Mature Families’, ‘Outer Suburbs’ or ‘Spacious Rural Living’. You get the picture.

Ethnically diverse, less connected and more economically challenged communities are somewhat more likely to book later, when prices are usually highest. Dynamic pricing, fully embracing market economics, inevitably promotes the inequality already baked into the market. It’s discomforting but we should have eyes open to this.

Think about hotels. Dynamic pricing increases don’t affect the richest (who book premium regardless) or the poorest (who can’t afford to participate). For everyone else, it’s designed to drive choices. As price rises, will you change dates? Stay somewhere less convenient? Choose a worse room? Or pay the premium? It’s those living between the extremes of rich and poor whose behaviour is driven by price.

Finding the balance

At the risk of being exceptionally reductive, it’s easier selling tickets in a purely commercial model. So long as you don’t break laws and can find a willing market large enough to sustain your business, relatively speaking you’re all set.

Charities on the other hand have more factors to balance. To qualify for exemption from most Corporation Tax and some VAT, they must satisfy a requirement to deliver public benefit – usually for arts charities that includes some form of educational element, and includes delivering for ‘the poor’. The Charity Commission clarifies that this “does not just mean the very poorest” but includes “people of modest means”.

People of modest means are experiencing mounting economic pressure and ticket discounting is a key tool to continue reaching this group. As we do so, we should be mindful of increased reputational risk; some audience members are scouting for new ways to punch down.

Recent social media outrage about cultural pricing may be an aberration, or early warning that values underpinning longstanding pricing practices face visceral challenge. All price is communication, and for some the message is: ticket prices are exclusionary and unfair.

Getting on the front foot

We can get on the front foot. Could someone, triggered by your pricing choices, find an explanation online for why pricing is structured as it is? Are your ticket sales team coached with clearly worded answers? Is there sufficient transparency? We will imminently hear the outcome of the government’s Putting Fans First consultation, and transparency will likely be a big theme.

Many arts organisations have “the heart of a charity and the mindset of a business”. These impulses can be tricky to hold in balance – it’s fatuous to say they’re never in tension – but the actions of both heart and head may increase reputational risk in the face of anti-immigrant, anti-benefits sentiment in future.

Transparent, confident, calm, proactive, pre-existing explanation about our pricing will serve any organisation well if under fire for social discounting from those who, through harsh economic reality, find themselves strangers of kindness.