Analyzing No-Show Persons to Fine Tune Event Ticket Overbooking

摘要

The practice of overbooking, where a service provider promises to service more customers than she will be able to in expectation that some customers will cancel their request, has been widely implemented in industries such as hotels and airlines. Overbooking has not widely been used for event tickets. This is likely due to the availability of the secondary market, which allows people with tickets who know beforehand that they cannot attend the event to sell their ticket to someone else. Additionally, the danger of having more people arrive with tickets than there are seats in a venue is large because fans are often emotional. The present invention overcomes these limitations by using previous attendance records to accurately predict future attendance. This allows an event organizer to overbook with confidence that it will be very unlikely too many people will show up with tickets compared to the number of seats available.