Tourism passes are becoming more and more popular in busy tourist markets like New York City. From SightSeeing Pass to Explorer Pass, these passes help tourists decide on what attractions to visit and are critical to most attraction’s marketing mix, providing a predictable revenue stream with little to no marketing costs. Even with their ubiquity in the marketplace, because they drive down the ticket per cap for a venue many marketers still get asked "do we need to be in the tourism passes?" The answer is most likely yes.
Tourism passes make up 21% of the average attraction or tour ticketing mix and peak substantially for international tourists at 31%. This is a considerable amount of traffic and revenue for the average venue. The question most marketers need to ask themselves is, would we still get this audience if we weren't in the passes? The answer is most likely no.
A high 90% of those who purchase tourism passes would purchase additional tickets to an attraction not available through the pass. This seems like a strong argument for not being in a pass but should be taken with a large grain of salt. When tourists were then asked how many attractions they felt that strongly about visiting, a high 84% answered two to three.
While running marketing departments in the past I would always get asked the same question from executive leadership, do we need to be in these passes? The question was rooted in the lower ticket revenues we’d see from pass sales. The answer is it depends. It depends on how much of a priority you are to the tourism market. If you are seen as a “must visit” attraction then you may be able to hit your goals without being in a pass book, but in truth there are very few attractions that fit into this category. The important thing is to know where your attraction stands in terms of priority for visitation among tourists and take it from there.
...
