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The Merlin VIP Annual Pass

bluesonichd said:
A load of tosh.

Merlin made a ****e load of money from the pass
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As I already talked about, I have no doubt they made a lot of money from the pass. However, how much of that translated into profit considering the costs involved in running the product? Most importantly, how much did it cost each individual attraction to service VIP passholders and what did they get from Merlin as a group in return?

Every single point I mentioned in my post has a cost attached to it - a cost which each attraction would bear the brunt of for each visit. That's not tosh, that's simple fact. There has to be a reason they got rid of the pass, and Merlin being Merlin cost will be the factor. If Merlin made so much profit from each passholder, they'd be telling themselves and the attractions to suck up the complaints and issues they've had and deal with it - that's clearly not the case.
 
How much does it cost to service any paying or Passholder guest who visits.
Towers box office is always full of people complaining, issuing out free return tickets. Free fastracks. Margic money vouchers.
The cost of running the Vip pass would have bed. No different to the cost of running the map pass or the cost or running the day entery people.
 
bluesonichd said:
How much does it cost to service any paying or Passholder guest who visits.
Towers box office is always full of people complaining, issuing out free return tickets. Free fastracks. Margic money vouchers.
The cost of running the Vip pass would have bed. No different to the cost of running the map pass or the cost or running the day entery people.
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If your logic is correct though, for what business reason would you feel they scrapped the pass?


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I think the park specific annual fast tracks at around £500 will be the reason. Just hope this doesn’t destroy the premium MAP pricing or current benefits which is really good value for a family
 
bluesonichd said:
How much does it cost to service any paying or Passholder guest who visits. Towers box office is always full of people complaining, issuing out free return tickets. Free fastracks. Margic money vouchers.
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I'm not saying all other customers cost nothing to service in terms of queries/complaints. As people pay more for a product, their propensity to complain generally increases - and rightly so. You pay more, you expect more. As a result for example, you'll likely have a larger percentage of PMAP holders complaining than standard pass holders. That's happily soaked up because of the higher cost of the pass and the number of complaints relative to the number of passholders is still relatively small.

Looking at VIP passholders, the number of pass holders is considerably smaller, so the percentage of them complaining will be inherently higher. So the averaging out the cost of dealing with those complaints will be much much higher than a standard ticket holder or a passholder. That's likely one of the cost factors for the pass going.

bluesonichd said:
The cost of running the Vip pass would have bed. No different to the cost of running the map pass or the cost or running the day entery people.
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There are massive differences to the costs of a VIP pass to a MAP/Season Pass or ticket holder. Complaints are actually a small part of the point I was making. As a premium passholder for example, on a visit to Towers I don't:
  • Have someone dealing with my prebooking to visit. There is a staffing cost associated with this.
  • Have someone meeting me at the gate on the day. The staff may be there, but this takes them away from their usual duties on the turnstyles, or on busy days they may need someone on the gate permanently.
  • Have someone issue me a fastrack wristband. Don't forget the cost of that band must somehow be accounted for.
  • Have an Express parking space, a space which is removed from a potentially full paying guest. Yes, I get free parking, but standard spaces are plentiful and aren't in short supply like Express is.
  • At the end of the season have inclusive maze tickets and special events such as the VIP area at Fireworks. Again, all this has some sort of cost attached to it.
You may argue some of the above such as staff accounts to mere minutes for them to deal with, but everything has a cost which must be accounted for somewhere along the line. Multiply those additional costs against the number of VIP passholders and their multiple visits a season and that £725 cost very quickly gets eaten into (if the individual attractions even see any of that money in the first place!). Add the cost of dealing with queries and complaints to that, and you soon realise that pass was a bit of a bargain in the grand scheme of things!
 
:rolleyes:
Many passholders know the probably true reason it went
It’s not something I’m going to talk about on a public forum so I’m can’t make a valid counter argument

The pass is gone. End off

Wait till next year till something better or worse comes along, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
 
bluesonichd said:
:rolleyes:
Many passholders know the probably true reason it went
It’s not something I’m going to talk about on a public forum so I’m can’t make a valid counter argument

The pass is gone. End off

Wait till next year till something better or worse comes along, depending on which side of the fence you sit.
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Ahh the “i have run out of arguments so [insert cryptic reason here]” response :D

I agree with Craig on this, there might be other background complications that helped make the decision but ultimately the income the VIP pass generated did not provide enough profit for the business due to running costs.
 
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