non-profit haunt question - expected growth

[snowmand03]

My question is to all the commercial and non-profit medium to large scale haunts:

preface: for 2009 my non-profit haunt "Fortress of Nightmares" had 1,723 visitors over the 6 nights we were open. This was the first year we had done things differently and saw a 50% increase in ticket sales. I know i won't expect that again in 2010, as we are keeping the same format as 2009, but changing room design, layouts, etc. .

here's the question:
what kind of growth can a haunt expect each year? i believe those with MBA's call this CAGR. (compound annual growth rate) I'm finding this very difficult to predict because our past events are so different from what we are doing now that its comparing apples to bananas.

Thoughts and input greatly appreciated!

[SiliasGrimm211]

Hi David.. Its kinda hard to foresee it since the economy has been so screwed up. I would say, this year promises to be a good year. Look how the holiday season went, sales were up by 30something percent. So who knows. I feel this will be the haunters year. Good luck with that my friend.

[tot13]

I think it really depends on what type of area you operate in and how you advertise. The first 4 years we were open, we drew between 1700-2000 customers during 6-10 nights of operation. We depended on word-of-mouth and flyers primarily for advertisement. We also took advantage of free postings on local radio station websites as well as doing interviews on local tv. We also participate in the local high school homecoming parade, and yes, we use a Trail of Terror theme. We throw beads and candy, left-over t-shirts from the previous year, and give away free tickets to the Trail. The mentality of the free tickets is to give away two tickets and hope they will bring others that would not have visited the Trail otherwise.

In 2009, we had a nice jump to 2500 patrons over only 5 nights. I attribute the increase in part to our growing reputation, but also we worked a deal with screenvisions.com and created a 10 second spot that showed before every movie on every screen, every day for 8 weeks at two different theatres. We feel we more than made up for our costs.

Just some ideas that we use, but we're always looking for other ways to advertise.

[grantbrott]

Advertising will have a lot to do with it, the more quality advertising you get out the more patrons will show. If you are doing no advertising at all and just basing it on word of mouth then its usually safe to expect a slight increase due to word of mouth from the previous year. If your looking to add several hundred or thousand people to your guest numbers then a quality marketing campaign with some good advertising is what it will take. Advertising is the biggest expense for most haunts as they get large but is also the way they increase their ticket sales each year.

[snowmand03]

Thanks everyone for your input... Now another quick question: Do you think that by offering ticket sales online, we will help build a significant amount of growth for this year? (if you/your attraction offers online sales, has it helped you?) We had about 1700 visitors last year, and are hoping to build that up to 2500 or more this year.

[tot13]

Thanks everyone for your input... Now another quick question: Do you think that by offering ticket sales online, we will help build a significant amount of growth for this year? (if you/your attraction offers online sales, has it helped you?) We had about 1700 visitors last year, and are hoping to build that up to 2500 or more this year.

Our haunt has about the same number of patrons as your's, and at this point on-line sales, for me, is just too big of a headache to consider, lol. If you already have a website and you are (or have someone who is) proficient in web design, have a poll to see if your guests would be interested in on-line sales. I would be curious to hear from someone who does on-line ticket sales to see what percentage of their overall sales is by on-line.

[snowmand03]

tot13: I too am curious about other locations numbers, maybe someone will share those highly classified figures with us? ;) anyone? anyone? .... Last year we did "exit polling" - we gave business cards out with a link and code to an online survey and 66% (150 responses) would prefer to buy online, as opposed to waiting in line on-site.

For this year, we have an agreement with E-Tix in the works. They seem like the best choice for us because they handle all of the back-end work, plus promote the event on their website, along with other local events.