Why You Should Include A Booking Fee For Your Facility
Online bookings are now commonplace in the way visitors book tickets to your attractions, clubs and leisure facilities. With this shift to online sales, there comes a greater cost to your facility through acquirer fees, supplier costs, additional safety measures, and customer no-shows which cannot be replaced resulting in lost revenue.
So why should you add a booking fee to your online sales? Discover why below.
1. Cover Payment Processor & Supplier Costs
A small booking fee transaction is big enough to cover any payment processor fees and/or supplier fees. Payment processors will charge anything between 1-2% per transaction online, and your supplier will either have a fixed fee or a percentage fee per transaction.
2. Reduce No-Shows
Facilities generally control entries by using time slot bookings. Those facilities who are offering ‘zero value bookings’ have experienced no shows which has reduced the footfall, resulting in a smaller spend per head on site. Adding a fee to these lower-valued bookings or even ‘zero-valued bookings’ can be refunded on-site or even replaced with a voucher to the onsite café. However, if they decide not to show the booking fee can be kept and go towards the lost potential spend per head.
3. Help Towards Additional Health & Safety Costs
Signs that remind customers to adhere to required health and safety measures have become a necessity for all facilities. These extra spends mean the profit facilities make on their booking values has reduced, ultimately making it harder for facilities to survive. A small fee for online bookings can help ease this burden and keep profit margins.
4. How Much Should Your Booking Fee Be?
Unsure how your customers will react to a booking fee? We suggest to start off small, for example, 1.5% of the value of your booking will cover both your acquirer and supplier fees. This can be slightly increased over time to cover additional costs.