This Town is Crawling with Kids
4/20/17
This time of year, Broadway is filled with kids—dressed up, dressed down, walking our streets, and packing our theatres. Spring is when Broadway attracts the most young audience members—student and youth travelers—from around the globe. In recent years, Spring Break season has flowed right into School Trip season and now easily extends into June and beyond.
For this March to June, Broadway Inbound has already sold tens of thousands of tickets to tour operators specializing in student travel and direct to school groups. And that’s just one distribution channel; across the industry, student travel is a huge contributing factor to Broadway’s spring uplift.
This is due to increased emphasis on promoting Broadway to educators, tour operators, and travel agents, as well as initiatives developed to foster young audiences and support theatre arts in schools: The Jimmys, Kids Night, the Situation Project, Broadway Bridges, Broadway Junior, the Shubert Foundation High School Theatre Festival, and more.
To help ensure that Broadway is an attractive product for student groups, here are a few things to keep in mind:
We need to continue strengthening the industry’s efforts to attract young audiences to Broadway. In addition to being valuable audience development, students are good business. By learning more about the behavior of student groups, increasing payment flexibility, and adding opportunities for learning, we can ensure that educators and student travel professionals continue to make Broadway the centerpiece of their NYC visit.
For more information, visit Broadway Inbound.
For this March to June, Broadway Inbound has already sold tens of thousands of tickets to tour operators specializing in student travel and direct to school groups. And that’s just one distribution channel; across the industry, student travel is a huge contributing factor to Broadway’s spring uplift.
This is due to increased emphasis on promoting Broadway to educators, tour operators, and travel agents, as well as initiatives developed to foster young audiences and support theatre arts in schools: The Jimmys, Kids Night, the Situation Project, Broadway Bridges, Broadway Junior, the Shubert Foundation High School Theatre Festival, and more.
To help ensure that Broadway is an attractive product for student groups, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- They are not all matinee-goers. Weekday matinees are great for local school groups, but for those staying in hotels, evening activities are welcomed—keeping kids busy until bedtime.
- Student groups come in all sizes but are amongst the larger groups we see. To accommodate large groups, flexibility in pricing across sections is helpful.
- Keep payment terms simple. Many student groups cannot confirm numbers until 60 days or so before the performance—for Canadian schools it can be tighter—mostly because the schools don’t know how many kids will qualify to take the trip.
- Experiential learning creates an incentive to buy tickets. Workshops and master classes drive sales by enriching the theatrical experience and delivering on required educational standards.
We need to continue strengthening the industry’s efforts to attract young audiences to Broadway. In addition to being valuable audience development, students are good business. By learning more about the behavior of student groups, increasing payment flexibility, and adding opportunities for learning, we can ensure that educators and student travel professionals continue to make Broadway the centerpiece of their NYC visit.
For more information, visit Broadway Inbound.
Originally published in Broadway Briefing.