Dynafares

Budget airlines such as Air Deccan have, or used to have a flexible fare system known as Dynafare. This basically means that the earlier you book your ticket, the cheaper is the price you pay for it, up to a point. Also, if a ticket cannot be sold, a last minute booking is also going to be considerably cheaper. Here's the logic behind it. The only way to make revenue on a plane flight is to fill the thing. Its going to fly regardless, so your fixed costs are there whether you stuff it full or not, so it just makes plane(sic) (please excuse the pun) sense to not have any empty seats, even at the cost of giving them away dirt cheap. If you are a budget airline, your variable cost per passenger is also low, as you're not exactly providing much in terms of service. Basically, its a really smart move, that has only really backfired because there is an extreme mismatch in India over demand and supply of plane tickets, i.e everyone seems to want to fly. Something that our "Ooh, spending any money on yourself is a fucking luxury" stupid ass government didn't seem to think of. The point is that in a market where demand and supply are evenly matched, this is a great system to maximise your revenues, as you encourage people to a)get into your flight early, garaunteeing you revenue b) More people to fly, by booking early c) Filling up the last few seats which would otherwise have gone to last minute travellers taking a train or having to pay insane amounts for a fixed final fare on Jet or other full service airline.

Okay, not that I've dealt with the explanation, here's my idea. There's another industry with high fixed, low variable cost ratio, that is also dependant on people buying tickets, also involves a lot of cheapasses, and also has to deal with a large amount of stupid and overburdening tax. It's also targetting a very similiar economic demographic, which usually has the access to internet (Deccan usually has its bookings online) and credit/debit card payments. It's called The Multiplex.

See, especially for morning/afternoon shows on weekdays, you have a lot of theatres going plain empty (which is a good thing at certain times, but anyhow...) I'm sure this entails a lot of lost revenue for any cineplex. It would be interesting to see how a dynafare system for a movie theatre would work, if you could price tickets dynamically. It would be of great convinience and advantage as well, setting up the online system, as it would save you the bother of having to buy tickets beforehand. If anyone has an eye on petrol costs right now, I'm sure the little extra you'd spend on the credit card service charge would kind of account for the money you'd spend going to the theatre to buy tickets in advance. It doesn't make sense. As with airlines, a printed ticket system for the movies could also be set up, making life a lot easier.

Basically, I think a system where the ticket cost starts off cheap, and gets progressively more expensive as the hall fills up is a very good idea. It'll encoura the last 10-20 at higher than average rates, so the people who really want to see the movie but were too bloody lazy can pay to get in it. Its supply and demand at its finest.

It would be interesting to see a study on whether it could be implemented or not. It might succeed, but then it might also be a fantastic failure. As with these things, you never know till you try.

Happy Rakhi by the way. If you're Mika, you might get more than you bargained for.