Optimizing the income of a performance hall

Context

The Place des Arts company (la PDA) is a public company that owns an entire space in dowtown Montréal city dedicated to the artistic and cultural expression. It includes six performance halls (Wilfrid-Pelletier, Théâtre Maisonneuve, Théâtre Duceppe, La Cinquième Salle, Claude-Leveillée et la Maison Symphonique de Montréal) as well as a parking lot and several other spaces that it rents out mainly for catering purposes.

Our intervention is part of a global reflection on the valorization of their data that the PDA had initiated a few years ago, and in the willing to identify opportunities and resources to optimize their revenues while guaranteeing accessibility to a diversity of audiences.

The first phase of a revenue optimization and flexible pricing project consisted of reconfiguring the pricing of the Wilfrid-Pelletier and Théâtre Maisonneuve halls.

Objectives

Our work was the first phase of the revenue optimization and flexible pricing project which consisted of reconfiguring the pricing of the Wilfrid-Pelletier and Théâtre Maisonneuve halls. The main objective was to describe new, optimized rates maps. 

Methodology

We performed the entire data science cycle, from defining the business angle to prototyping a tool based on a predictive model of seat attractiveness regarding show characteristics, which included the steps:

  • Problem identification
  • Data identification and diagnosis
  • Data cleaning: which was a substantial part of the migration period the organization was in
  • Development, testing and selection of the best model
  • Implementation of the prototype in the tools used

The client was an active partner in the development of the model as he took on the role of context expert. In the context of a transactional ticket sales system, many tacit uses of the system had to be shared throughout the mandate. Indeed, there was no model or data dictionary at the time that would allow contextualization of certain findings in the data.

Results

The analysis ultimately reveals three types of hall configuration, essentially influenced by the discipline of the shows presented. The interpretation of these results allows us to conjecture that the pricing could be optimized according to the disciplines.