David J.
Danto
Business travel
thoughts in my own, personal opinion
eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org 
Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD
Tickets…
One thing us frequent
travelers know about is tickets. The very backbone of our traveling is
based on obtaining tickets to board a plane, train or ship, and the ability to
do things while we travel – like attend a play or concert – usually requires
tickets as well. The nature of tickets
however is radically changing – and not necessarily for the better. Ticket issuing companies are doing whatever
they can to make the process more profitable for them and more difficult for
us. As we come-out of the pandemic we’ve
been living through – one where the travel, hospitality and live events
industries were severely impacted – we need to be aware of these changes and
hopefully do something about them.
Going back in time, I am old enough to remember when airlines themselves
used paper tickets. The actual paper had
the value – much like any currency – and each person boarding a flight needed
to have one. Then, in addition, we each
needed a boarding pass – often stapled to the paper ticket, and taken from us
as we got onboard the flight. If you
needed to make a change to your itinerary, you had better have your paper
ticket to do so. In 1994 the airlines
introduced the e-ticket, and then by the mid-2000s paper tickets for flying
were history. Is it easier to check-in
and board a flight? Yes, however, the
value of your purchase no longer transfers to you as a negotiable
instrument. It now stays with the
airline. I also remember the practice of
buying tickets for flights using only a first initial and last name, and being
able to let any family member use it.
E-tickets (and 9/11) stopped that practice cold. Now we purchase airfare for only one specific
individual to use, and we no longer have to get a paper boarding pass. The QR code or
bar-code on our mobile devices gets us on the plane. The airline transfers nothing of value to us
in the process other than the actual service.
Tickets for events have also gone
through a similar revolution. I can
remember scheduling myself to wait in a line early in the morning at a venue or
Ticketron location in my
teenage years the day a concert or sporting event went on sale. We always hoped there would be good tickets
still left by the time we got to the front of the line. There rarely were – but despite that, illegal
ticket scalpers always seemed to get better seats than fans no matter how hard
it was to get the tickets. Eventually
other firms came along to replace Ticketron, and then tickets by telephone,
followed by tickets via computer purchase came along….as did unbelievably
insane fees for using the ticketing services.
To quote from a June
2019 Vox article:
*************************************
“For
the August
2016 issue of Consumer Reports, the magazine’s staff drew attention to what
they called the “ticket fee frenzy” by dissecting the price of a floor-level
seat at a Guns N’ Roses concert taking place that summer in Kansas City,
Missouri.
The ticket, which supposedly cost $250, would actually be $300.75 after
fees — in other words, 20 percent of the ticket’s face value was tacked on in
the form of itemized fees with confusing names.
There was a $19.50 delivery fee to cover expenses of mailing a ticket;
a $4 facility charge set by the venue; a $4.25 order processing fee shared
between the ticket seller, Ticketmaster, and the client, Live Nation, which
happens to be Ticketmaster’s parent company; and a service fee, which was the
largest, at $23. That money would go entirely to Ticketmaster.
While
these particular numbers may be new to you if you do not live in the Midwest
and attend canonical classic rock concerts, the gist is likely familiar.
According to a study
published by the Government Accountability Office in April 2018, the
average ticket fee is now 27 percent of the ticket’s face value, with some fees
as high as 37 percent. And Ticketmaster is regularly
referred to as one of the most-hated companies
in America — it’s the largest online ticket seller by far and has been under
monopoly scrutiny since its 2010 merger with Live Nation, the country’s largest
promotion and venue company.”
*************************************
There was a time when people could avoid the insane extra
fees the ticket sellers charged by purchasing tickets directly at the
venue. Most of these opportunities are
now gone, as nearly all venues just use the Ticketmaster system to sell their
own tickets. (‘Why let people keep the 27%-37% fees if they’re willing to pay them
anyway?’) Now, in addition, in most
cases, you can’t even get a real ticket anymore. A couple of months ago my wife and I
purchased two tickets to a concert taking place here in New Jersey (at the PNC
Bank Arts Center) in July, and just last week we purchased four tickets to an
August concert in Las Vegas (at Mandalay Bay’s House of Blues.) In both cases the ONLY option was to receive
an e-ticket on your mobile device. You
could not request a print-at-home ticket, nor a real ticket
sent 
in the US mail. (Even though they are not sending you
anything, they still charged the
same fees. First it was a “service charge” fee for mailing the
tickets, then a “convenience fee” for
allowing you to use your own printer, paper and ink, and now they don’t even
bother telling you what the fee is for.
They might as well call it a “we’re
greedy, what are you going to do about it” fee.) Worse than the fees, the tickets are now not
even transferrable anymore. They’re not
even a bar-code or QR code delivered to you that you
can share with your fellow attendees.
The information now lives ONLY on your phone. It’s stored in the mobile device’s memory
when you place it in your wallet app, and you need to use the device’s RF chip
to be read at the venue to get into the concert. That means, when I buy tickets for three
other people to meet me at an event, I can no longer send them the tickets in
advance so we can meet in the seats. I
have to wait for them outside the venue because only my phone has the tickets.
I happen to use a thick and hard-to-remove battery case on my
phone, so using the RF chip is problematic for me. I sent an email to Ticketmaster’s customer
service asking how to convert my most recent purchase to real tickets, and here
is the response I received:
*************************************
Hi
David,
Thank
you for connecting with us regarding your ticket delivery for [order/xxxxxxxx]. Unfortunately, Print-at-Home is unavailable, so
we are unable to email you your tickets. Mobile entry is the easiest and safest
way to access tickets because your mobile phone IS your ticket.
This
is also stated at the time of purchase before placing an order as it states:
*(Go
Mobile: Your phone's your ticket. Locate your tickets in your account - or
in your app. When you go mobile, your tickets will not be emailed to you or
available for print.)
*************************************
Easiest and safest? It
would be just as easy to send me four QR codes or
bar-codes to get me into the venue. I
could email or text the images to the other three attendees and meet them in
the seats – that’s what would be easy.
What they’ve done is make it as difficult as possible for me to give the
tickets to anyone else – and that’s what they mean by the term safest – safest
for them, not me. They don’t want me
reselling my purchase. Heaven forbid I
should become a ticket scalper that charges more for the ticket than I paid. They want that privilege reserved exclusively
for themselves.
Yup – remember the illegal scalpers I mentioned seeing above
in my teenage years? Now they are legal
and what used to be the crime is perpetrated by the venues and Ticketmaster
themselves. They reserve any number of
seats they want and charge you whatever they want over the face value – and
then they still charge you the fees
on top of that! Easiest and safest
indeed…
At least the companies that are gouging us as above are still
confirming tickets for events. Broadway
theaters in New York have held onto the monies paid for tickets for cancelled
shows for well over a year and a half – and despite a confirmed opening date
for most Broadway performances to resume, many have still not provided a date
or time or confirmed seat for these past purchases. The Hudson Theater in New York has had our
$198 for two balcony tickets (plus a $22 “service
fee” and a $3 “order processing fee”
of course) since September 2019. Not
only have they not told us when we can attend or how to get a refund, they have
actually provided absolutely no way to contact them to get information. Here’s what is says on their website.
The pandemic certainly wasn’t their fault, but not being able
to reach them on-line is a travesty.
They used a ticketing system for this play called “ATGTickets.com” to sell the tickets, and
when you try to reach that firm they reply that they now only work in the
UK. When you email the Hudson Theater it
goes to the Hudson Theater in Los
Angeles, not the one on Broadway.
Ugh! Who knows if this show will
even happen? Perhaps I should charge
them a “contact-difficulties” fee
every time I make an attempt to find out and just send them the bill.
What does all this mean to you? Well, it’s clear that the days of obtaining a
transferrable paper ticket for any reason are over, and just as clear that the
event ticketing industry is ripe for yet another class-action lawsuit. Some sharp attorneys (possibly reading this
right now) will make a bundle on the fees, we consumers will be given an
opportunity to vie for impossible to obtain tickets for a non-attractive event
or two as a make good, and nothing will change.
The only paper tickets left on the planet seem to be the kind that
traffic enforcement officers give out – and nobody actually wants them.
This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal
opinions.
All image and links provided above as reference under
prevailing fair use statutes.
++++++++
As always, feel free to write and comment, question or
disagree. Hearing from the traveling
community is always a highlight for me.
Thanks!