(30 Jul 2021, 12:57 am)streetdeckfan wrote I'd say they tend to focus on the commuters because of the consistent revenue, they're almost guaranteed a certain level of income from sales of corporate, monthly, and to some extent weekly tickets. From a company's perspective it's better to have a lower amount of consistent revenue than a higher but less consistent amount. If there's a month of bad weather then revenue is going to be considerably lower than if the weather was nice.
Having said that, it is very important to cater to the leisure crowd as well. In terms of pricing, it's hard to strike a balance. They need the pricing to be high enough to cover costs but not too high to scare people away. And with their regular single and return tickets I think they're pretty close to the high end of what they can charge (I still think day and week tickets are reasonable). MG said in his FB live that they'd seen a 100% increase in evening passengers and a 25% increase in revenue, indicating that pricing a pretty major factor when it comes to leisure customers.
They'd also rather have a bus with 50 passengers paying £1 than 10 passengers paying £5. If one of those passengers paying £5 stops getting the bus, that's an instant 10% decrease in revenue which with the relatively small margins could turn a bus from being profitable to just breaking even.
Now, if only they could introduce a proper Sunday service!
Not sure I agree with that, they're both as bad as each other. The £1 customers are too price elastic and are only using the service because it's a £1 so if you increased the price then half of them will disappear. Also the 10 customers paying £5 could be easily on a minibus so there's fuel savings there whereas 50 passengers would need a double decker so the profits aren't the same but there's the bigger risk of customers being worth more.
The sweet spot is somewhere in between (£2 mark) but out of those 2 options I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred the £5 tickets if the revenue is the same.