Liskeard Information Centre
Foresters Hall, Pike Street, Liskeard, PL14 3JE
Tel 01579 349148, Fax 07092 399866
Update since 31st May 2016
Visitor Numbers / Sales
Visitor numbers this summer have been significantly lower than in 2015, in June and July combined we had 250 fewer visitors this year. Ticket sales were down on the same period (for some reason Air Day tickets did not sell very well this year) but gift sales were up 40% so overall profit for the period was slightly higher than in 2015.
We are currently selling tickets for the Liskeard Concert Series and the upcoming Woolly Workshops, we are also now selling Looe Music Festival tickets for the first time at a 10% commission rate.
Ticket Commission
Since we started selling tickets in the TIC the Town Council have had a policy of charging 10% commission unless it is a charity event in which case we do not charge any commission at all. It was pointed out to us during the recent review process that this is not in line with what other people do. For some events we only sell a handful of tickets and it doesn’t take up much of our time but others can have much more impact. There are some events which have multiple combinations of ticket prices, events on different days etc and these sometimes require complicated spreadsheets which we set up and a fair amount of our time when people are buying tickets. In addition now that we have the facility to take card payments we are often making sales over the phone and posting out tickets. We do keep a note of payments taken by card and take a small amount (2.75%) out to cover the processing fees even for charity events (I explain we are happy to waive commission but shouldn’t be expected to make a loss) which organisers have accepted.
However, there is a grey area of not for profit organisations – not strictly charities but all profits are ploughed back into the events. Liskeard Concert Series operates in this way and we negotiated a 5% commission rate with them. I would like to propose that we officially adopt a policy of 5% on all not for profit events, 10% on commercial events and have a discussion about charity events.
New Shelving
The Facilities Manager has been in discussions with a local carpenter and we hope to have the new shop shelving installed in early November.
Work Experience
In July we, in conjunction with the Museum, had a year 10 work experience student here for a week. We found this student to be very challenging and really not the right fit for us. We hadn’t met the student prior to the placement starting as it had been arranged by his mother, in hindsight we realise this was a mistake and in future will only accept students if we have met them beforehand, ideally if they have made the approach themselves and shown an interest in working in this sort of environment.
Vicky Cutts
23rd August 2016