Protip for event organizers: A waitlist for an event is also a maybe list. If spots become available and you release tickets, only 1 in 3 waitlisters will take them, the other 2 joined because a waitlist spot is a zero-cost option. So a waitlist of 15 is really only 5 deep.
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Free feature idea for
Allow waitlisters to pay an option price up to some fraction of ticket price set by organizer, and show top bid. Allow organizer to release tickets in order of bid price, and adjust against ticket price if exercised
Cc:
Eg: refactorcamp ticket is $95. I might allow people to bid up to $10. If top WL bid is $5, and they take a released ticket, they pay $90. If they decline, we get the $5 less EB commission. Point isn’t to get more $ for event budget (which is nice) but separate wants and maybes.
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Can also set a lower limit >0 to further weight ‘definitely want’ over ‘maybe’. Tunable knob.
Also helps factor in things like: locals are more likely to be able to actually exercise a waitlist option late since last-minute out-of-town travel can be costly.
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Hmm, you could even get clever and let organizers offer >1x offset of ticket price from option price. So if you bought a $5 waitlist spot, you get $10 taken off ticket price as reward for both being flexible and helping fill a spot, and for risking the $. Clear the market.
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It really is inefficient when an event is oversubscribed but still not full because no way to sort WL by interest/ability to make it. There’s spots and people wanting to go, but they don’t match up because someone who can’t go was ahead on WL and took up a 24h response cycle.
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You can even give people probabilities of getting a ticket based on cancelation rate analytics and WL position. For eg I know from experience that refactor camp usually has ~8% cancellation, so I expect 8 spots to open up if I have 100. First 8 WL are nearly certain to get in.
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Of course the alternative is to oversell like airlines but I don’t think events want to bump people who bought tickets unless it’s like movies with later showings.
Heh, I’ve pretty much fleshed this feature out. And it’s a top line revenue booster too.
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