Season Seven Seat Reservation

[AAroddersAA]

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Could I offer an opinion that perhaps APAT offers a more personalised and community orientated service to our customers and for that reason what we offer might justify a premium fee?   Whether you view it similarly is very important and if you do, what a premium is worth is equally important.
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This is true, but I think the biggest problem is to do with attracting new players - you can"t tell that this is the case until you"re already involved with APAT.

This is the problem. Maybe you are even asking the wrong people Des. Yes the apat community/regs will all agree there is a better personalized service and a better community. Thing is most of these people will turn up and play anyway (myself included). None of us are going to complain about a fiver. As Joe said the costs of the weekends dwarf this and the reason we are all prepared to pay this is that we see it as a weekend away with mates, a few beers a really great poker tournament and side event and some general R&R.

However I don"t think the above actually markets too well in the poker community if the goal is to attract new players (maybe I am wrong). What people are looking for is a good value well run tournament which APAT already has, the LPPL is a great tool for marketing this imo. I still think it is fine as an optional extra but is something that will be used by the community at certain events. Not something that will attract more new players to apat.

As this is something that will appeal more to the community then maybe something along the line of what Stu suggested is a better approach? Maybe an annual fee that allows certain benefits including reserving a limited amount of seats each year. Although to be honest I can"t think of what else could be added?

[PHIL_TC]

Personally, I miss the days of the click fests, Saturday morning gone with 3 laptops setup and a mobile phone all trying to get a ticket for Anna for One Direction brought back some happy memories. F5.. F5...F5... Goooooooo!!!!.. copy and paste credit card details from notepad and pray

Anyway.. from what I can see the charge is optional, so if you don"t want to use the reservation service and take your luck at the casino then you can.

Using the above facility I"m going to guess that it"ll be possible to see a running total of "seats sold so far / seats available" and which events are looking at selling out and will I"m sure cause more seats to be sold and sell out quicker. If its on the home page. Even better....

The final thing I would say now is don"t underestimate the important of having a clear message on the home page with an instant call to action.  "Buy Now".  How difficult is it to buy a seat to an APAT event if you"re a new player?  Very difficult in my opinion.  If we go down this route then I believe for recreational players, it becomes easier to get a seat with APAT than with any other tour nationwide.

This is a very good point, any method of making seats easier to get has got to be the way forward. I think the current way of doing it through the forum isnt easy at all.

All gets a thumbs up from me x

[fandango]

My view is that £75 is an absolute steal for such a well organised and structured event. Plus you get to meet lots of great people (looking forward to GX tomorrow!).

Adding £5 to this cost for a guaranteed seat and to give APAT, who, I assume, do silly amounts of work behind the scenes, is a price very well worth paying.

Also, whenever I get the chance to play an event, travel and hotels bills dwarf this £5 charge.

This echoes my opinion .. paying what essentially is the price of a pint to secure my seat a few times a year seems a fair price.. If it helps APAT absorbs costs down the line and helps APAT to continue to run as it has over the past seasons all good..

[bluebrid1927]

Can"t see a problem with it to be honest, happy to pay a fiver to reserve my seat as I don"t play in many of these due to the travelling so the chance to guarantee myself a seat in the tournaments I want to play in is more than welcome!!

[ian.ski309]

Maybe if I chew this idea over for longer I might change my mind, but I tend to agree with those who say that this doesn"t have the right APAT "feel" to it. It feels too similar to the way that Ticketmaster charge you a £5 "delivery" charge so that you can print your own concert tickets off at home, or the way the budget airlines find innovative ways to add to their overall charges.

When there was a long debate about whether the APAT faithful would be prepared to pay reg fees, I instantly agreed. Then came the charge for team shirts at ECOAP and WCOAP. Now we potentially have a "seat reservation fee", I"m already wondering what next year"s fee will be.

We all know that money is tight and it"s a very competitive market, but several people have already suggested alternative methods of raising revenue in this thread. To add my own suggestion, I don"t think that the potential of APAT's range of merchandise has been fully exploited. Tee shirts, polo shirts, hoodies, etc - why not turn a profit whilst turning customers into walking advertisements for the APAT brand ? I realise that there is also the administrative burden of the existing seat reservation system and it"s not all about the money, but it just feels like it.

At the end of the day it"s only a fiver and of course I"ll pay it, but the only worthwhile feedback is honest feedback right ?

[Paulie_D]

Maybe if I chew this idea over for longer I might change my mind, but I tend to agree with those who say that this doesn"t have the right APAT "feel" to it.

I know what you mean and, in general, I tend to agree.

However, APAT is evolving and, thus, the feel is going to have to change. Are we moving towards other tours/organisations...probably but that"s just a reaction to the market we APAT are in.

Times..they are a"changin and APAT should / has to adapt.

I"m not sure there is an ideal solution. I do think that the "membership" option is probably the optimal solution but that has it"s own admin issues.

I agree that the merchandising of APAT (clothing, etc) could be improved, perhaps by way of an e-commerce plug-in for the site but, again, that would, no doubt have it"s own issues.

It must be remembered that the APAT core team is limited to 3-4 people all of whom have "day jobs". They can"t be "All APAT - All The Time".

[AJDUK]

I"d happily pay a higher non-refundable booking fee that is either forfeited or used as part payment for a seat.
People will then think twice about committing to events they don"t know yet if they can make.
Suggest £20.
It doesn"t generate any revenue if everyone turns up, and so maybe doesn"t solve any problems. But I"m sure no revenue would be rare.

Similarly, I also think using a poker client with a tiny buy-in as a reservation system could work. It is after all self-administering. With clever setting of when you can and can"t unregister you are able to estimate interest and also commit people beyond a certain point. If the price was a quid "to cover admin" I think it would be more likely to succeed than the proposed £5 would. Is £1 enough and does using a poker client cut out enough of the admin?

At the end of the day any random player is not going to travel too far if they can"t be sure of a seat when they get there. There"s no doubt that seasoned APATers would pay the proposed fiver, and some would probably pay £50, but they"re already "in the bag". The message of £75+12.50 this gives to the random player is not good IMO.

     

[Jon MW]

Also if you don"t reserve and want to buy in at the venue

Will you be able to buy in before the actual event? Or would it have to be on the day?

If you can buy in before the day then it forces people to pay the money to reserve (if they"re not close enough to the venue to make it in person beforehand)

But if you can only buy in on the day then it means you"re suggesting people will have to pay for travel and hotel without having a guaranteed seat - the £5 may be nominally optional but it seems like a great deal of the time in practice it"s going to be mandatory to warrant the other expenditure needed.

[MintTrav]

1.  The administration of managing and amending player lists right up to the event taking place - this is largely driven by cancellations, which ran to about 20% at the recent WCOAP. 

2.  The lack of seat availability for new players, who may not be aware of our initial on sale dates - this is because seats tend to get reserved quickly, and new players do not often come back to see whether those seats have become available at a later date due to cancellations. 

Rather than a £5 booking fee in addition, what about a £5 deposit, that you lose if you cancel but is counted as part-payment when you pay the balance?

[hi_am_chris]

Or the reg fee + pound for processing costs? The reg fee u then don"t pay at the casino. If u don"t play u lose ur reg fee

[Paulie_D]

It"s great that options outside the box are being thought of but a big part of the issue is the transmission of funds to the casino (as Des mentioned).

All of these "part payment" options don"t take that into account.

I kind of like the reservation payment via the poker client idea though...that has possibilities.

[AJDUK]

It"s great that options outside the box are being thought of but a big part of the issue is the transmission of funds to the casino (as Des mentioned).

All of these "part payment" options don"t take that into account.

If we play online satellites then money always has to be transferred to the casino. The question is how much "tagging on" of more funds makes this process unworkable?
 

[Des]

I"m still in the office so not able to fully comment back on this guys, but thanks for all the suggestions.  Providing alternative suggestions and ideas is always an ask, but plenty of ideas have been put across above - so thanks for those.

The ideal scenario for APAT:-

1)  Keep the events open online until the last possible moment, ideally the evening before the event. 
2)  Offer the events with the shortest possible journey between becoming aware of them (on the home page) and committing to play - ie, don"t ask new players to wade through a 20 page thread and then have to download software etc, find a tournament tab, deposit funds, etc etc etc!
3)  Remove as much of the admin as we can to enable us to get on with some more important stuff for the tour.
4)  Avoid getting hit with charges from payment providers or currency transactions
5)  Generate revenue for APAT.

Unfortunately the ideal scenario isn"t possible, so we"ll do the best we can with the menu of items above. 

Keep the feedback coming please - but keep the above in mind!

A fiver for the best idea that"s put into operation....

[AMRN]

I don"t think I like this idea at all. Whilst it may satisfy the APAT hardcore in that they can guarantee seats in what are usually highly popular tournaments, I can only see it being detrimental to growth.  If I was looking at a tour that I hadn"t played before, and found one that was offering decent tourneys with 10% rake, and wanted to charge additional fees on top for the pleasure of reserving a seat, I suspect I would just go elsewhere and find an alternative (unlike five years ago, there are plenty of alternatives nowadays)

Once upon a time, APAT had the affordable deepstack market cornered - I don"t believe that"s the case any more. Being innovate with formats is what will keep the product fresh and highly marketable... not adding costs in what is a very delicate market (APAT is targetted at the Amateur player, and most Amateur players won"t have healthy bankrolls where £5 is inconsequential).

When the 10% rake was added to APAT tourneys, part of the special feel of APAT was removed. I fully understand and support the need for the rake in an ever changing climate where competition for poker (and sponsorship) has massively increased..... but APAT lost it"s ability to claim juice free poker. I think adding fees for the benefit of advance booking is a step too far in the other direction.

[ajcairns]

I don"t think I like this idea at all. Whilst it may satisfy the APAT hardcore in that they can guarantee seats in what are usually highly popular tournaments, I can only see it being detrimental to growth.  If I was looking at a tour that I hadn"t played before, and found one that was offering decent tourneys with 10% rake, and wanted to charge additional fees on top for the pleasure of reserving a seat, I suspect I would just go elsewhere and find an alternative (unlike five years ago, there are plenty of alternatives nowadays)

Once upon a time, APAT had the affordable deepstack market cornered - I don"t believe that"s the case any more. Being innovate with formats is what will keep the product fresh and highly marketable... not adding costs in what is a very delicate market (APAT is targetted at the Amateur player, and most Amateur players won"t have healthy bankrolls where £5 is inconsequential).

When the 10% rake was added to APAT tourneys, part of the special feel of APAT was removed. I fully understand and support the need for the rake in an ever changing climate where competition for poker (and sponsorship) has massively increased..... but APAT lost it"s ability to claim juice free poker. I think adding fees for the benefit of advance booking is a step too far in the other direction.

I wrote and rewrote several posts in attempted to be more constructive than my last post (the £75 + £7.50 + £5 one) but I failed.  The post above was just about exactly what I was trying to say.