[Accrs] 2018 Fair attendance and donations

Wed Jul 11 13:11:55 PDT 2018

I agree with Paula. Let's make a reasonable assumption on back door
visitors.

Ted

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 9:38 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society <
accrs at mail.accrs.org> wrote:

> Message From: Joel Clark  clark.joel.a at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
> Another alternative is to put a camera on the back door such that the
> front door hotseat person can watch both. Mounting a TV above the door
> would mean one person having a field of vision of both doors at once.
>
> I agree the vendors have decreased visibility. The booths are so tightly
> packed around the door you just cannot see it. There's a long cable running
> from the top of our door out to pavilion canopy structure. Placing a large
> long banner on this cable with an arrow pointing back to the door should
> allow for much better visibility should the fair allow it.
>
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018, 9:14 PM Alameda County Central Railroad Society <
> accrs at mail.accrs.org> wrote:
>
>> Message From: Paula Bursley  pbursley at comcast.net
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the great summary John.  I think we should make some
>> assumptions about how many people are coming in through the back door and
>> add those to our numbers.  If donations were 25% of the total, it would
>> seem logical that 25% of the visitors came in through the back unless those
>> entering the back door are more generous than those entering from the
>> front.  So, I think we probably attracted more than 11% of fair
>> attendance.  If we report numbers to the fair, I think we should take this
>> into account and make an estimate of the visitors entering the back and add
>> that on to the number we counted in front.  Next year we could put someone
>> at the back door for an hour on random days and keep track of how many
>> people enter while, at the same time, have another person keep track of
>> those entering in the front for the same hour.  Then we can compare the two
>> and come up with a percentage entering through the back door.  We can
>> estimate total visitors that way.  Just a suggestion.
>>
>> Paula
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 10, 2018, at 7:31 PM, Alameda County Central Railroad Society <
>> accrs at mail.accrs.org> wrote:
>>
>> Message From: Becky and John Kolberg  bjkolberg at aol.com
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, the 2018 Alameda County Fair is in the can.
>>
>> A review of the statistics for donations reveals this year’s performance
>> was second only to that of the year 2000, both in dollars and dollars per
>> visitor.  I’ll give a quantitative report at the next business meeting.
>> Since the 2000 record, donations began a long period of decline that only
>> began to improve in dollars four years ago and in $/visitor two years ago.
>> This year’s $/visitor was nineteen percent better than last year—a very
>> significant improvement.  Such a change begs the question—Why?
>>
>> At the welcome desk I have heard speculation regarding this phenomenon of
>> donation improvement, so I will add my opinions here.  This year the
>> donations collected in the box at the back door were almost a quarter of
>> all donations.  In contrast, the amount collected there in past years, when
>> it was counted separately, was less than ten percent.  That in its self
>> would account for about half of the donation improvement.  I believe there
>> are two reasons for that increase: 1. the scavenger hunt, and  2. the big
>> sign there drawing attention to the donation box.  In addition to the
>> above, I believe the strong national economy has added discretionary
>> spending money to the visitors.
>>
>> Visitor attendance, on the other hand, was lack luster.  In the last ten
>> years, it was the second lowest at 47,031.  It was only 144 more than last
>> year.  Our busiest day this year had 3,970 visitors.  A few years ago, that
>> many visitors in a single day was not unusual.  I believe the record was
>> 6,258 set in 2015.  I called the Fair office today to get their attendance
>> number.  Their preliminary number is 426,000+.  That puts our attendance at
>> 11.0% of the Fair attendance—not a significant improvement.  I noticed that
>> our percentage dropped two percentage points coincident with the placement
>> of retail booths around our front door in 2016.  The opinion of the Fair
>> personnel a couple years ago that the booths would improve our visibility
>> has proved false.
>>
>> John Kolberg
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