Show Hours
Deciding which hours events are open for should become a more scientific process. I would guess that the majority of shows have had someone arbitrarily choose an opening and closing time, at least at first. Longer running shows with a promoter that carries over year to year is a good bet for a show with fairly accurate hours tweaked over the years. Events in their first few years or with yearly rotating head seem to be more likely to pick longer show hours than are necessary.
I hesitate here to mention any suggested show times since every event is so personal in it’s character, including customer base and when they arrive, if at all. ;-)
I will try to give you an idea of how this can vary. At a very few shows we’ve done in the past, people actually come around with flashlights before dawn to look while you are setting up. Of course other shows do have not so early crowds, but I must say that a line waiting for the doors to open has not been a common sight to my eyes over the years. Come 10am, most events have opened except some festival types that start a bit later and go into the evening.
Outdoor shows any time of the year should certainly end before dark unless there really is a crowd there that late in which case lights or electricity should be made available. Also remember that it takes usually an hour or more to packup. Packing your car is harder to do if night has fallen. Winter shows tend to end earlier, not hard to see why when it’s black as pitch by 5 now here.
Many shows end too late. Some by just a half hour, others by more. I can’t count how many shows where we make almost no sales in the last hours, but stick around because the beginning was good and we of course want to be invited back. But why can’t promoters see that the crowd stops at one time when they themselves are selling tickets till the end, sometimes hours later. I can see that they want to stay open for the posted hours, but I am suggesting modifying future events’ hours based on learning from this event’s turnout by hour. Yep, start tracking how many people cross your entrance gate each hour, or half, etc. When planning next year’s event, you will have solid information to work with. You’ll probably need up a folks at busy times at some shows, but it will be worth it. You can combine this with ticket sales, but I’d separate them. Have these greeters ask each person which advertisements they saw/heard. Record that answer with the number of people in the group. If each heard abt it, surely record all those sources. Since I would hope most of you are spending rather large sums of money on advertising your event in several large ways. This tiny bit of research will help you advertise more effectively for all future events and will give you an accurate idea of which hours the bulk of the customers come during. Different ads attract customers at, if only slightly, different peak times as each ad’s venue has a particular audience. Certainly ads in church bulletins will not yield very early Sunday morning customers, but probably will bring them in droves from 10-1. Any promoters willing to share their info to help other events? Send whatever you have/know/want to share!
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