North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

Which rather suggests you were selling an annual pass last year at an incredibly cheap rate, with no guaranteed upside to the business.

I come back to the point I have held all along: depending whether you felt you were making a one-off visit or you might want to make several returns, the £49.50 fare looked either eye-wateringly expensive or far too cheap. The impact of that being, I strongly suspect, the worst of all worlds for the NYMR: many people making use of essentially free returns, while many others being dissuaded from paying any fare at all.

Tom

 

As I keep saying, confused thinking and mixed messages from the NYMR Management, in a range of areas. It's starting to look like a rudderless, lost shipwreck, sadly, and I'm afraid that a lot of it seems to date back to when Lineisclear became Chairman! Someone with firm ideas and opinions (a situation which can hardly be said of his predecessor!) can represent a big danger. When hoping for change, be careful what you wish for!

 

Gift Aid effectively gives free money worth 25% on a standard ticket price. Assuming a 70% Gift Aid success rate effectively gives a 17.5% additional revenue on all standard tickets, not to be sniffed at, but at a “cost” of offering the Annual Pass. At Beamish with infinite capacity this is not really a cost, and in any event would capture all secondary spend (except maybe for the fairground rides), unlike on the NYMR particularly as it moves to a 5-day railway.

I suspect not claiming gift aid but offering a reduced amount for a return visit would not match the 17.5% net additional revenue from gift aid. Eg
assuming a free annual pass attracts 20% returnees, then I suspect a 50% reduced fare offered to returnees would attract 10% of such passengers to return, causing a 5% net increase in revenue. Again, not to be sniffed at, but how much is actually additional income as some of the returnees would have returned in any event? Maybe half, leading to an overall 2.5% net increase in revenue.

 

I seriously doubt that you will get anything like a 70% take-up of gift aid on a £49.50 day ticket, voucher offer or not. In my experience a 20 - 30% success rate would be closer to reality.

 

There is truth in what you are saying that some would be dissuaded from paying the fare at all, but the question becomes if offering a reduced fare does it actually increase the overall revenue; increasing the number of passengers by a percentage more than the reduction in fare. At least on the NYMR those that thought the Pickering to Whitby £49.50 fare as unaffordable could then be offered the alternative £25 fare to Goathland for a railway experience (and still competitive for a 15 mile journey compared to other heritage railways) with few then actual walking away, and thus maximising overall revenue for the NYMR.

 

Yes it's free money, if those customers turn up in the first place. £400,000 in GA comes from 32,000 passengers. Not so long ago the NYMR passenger numbers were ten times that! How many have been put off by the high initial fare?

 

That 32,000 passengers is one of the few passenger statistics that we have but only because we can back calculate from the £400,000 quoted by those in a position to know and, to me, shows just how unsuccessful the scheme has been.

 

I haven't read all the t&C but this would suggest that a platform ticket/museum entry would suffice on a return visit as it would allow you to view charity property, perhaps no need to offer unlimited free travel?

 

I was talking to someone today who I would call a railway enthusiast, as is his wife. He was saying the annual pass had allowed them to go four times this year. I asked how often he might have gone without it and his response was “we generally go two or three times a year to Whitby on the train.” I just wonder how many others did the same thing in the past?

 

Where do you get ten times. Don’t forget:
- Children
- Short journies eg Pickering to Goathland, Goathland to Whitby
- To double ticket sales to get journeys
- add party bookings
And this year, returnees (maybe 20% - pure guess) and their children

 

Hmmm indeed!

It's why I find the whole NYMR approach so incoherent. On the one hand they push very hard the Gift Aid (in whatever form) which, as you note, is explicitly a donation, not a payment for a service. But then they also have really explicit conditions about refunds in the event that the service wasn't adequately delivered. Nothing joins up into a coherent whole.

A question for @Lineisclear : A passenger buys a ticket "to see the work of the charity" and signs the Gift Aid declaration. Due to a "mechanical failure of an exhibit" (hardly unusual with steam engines, or historic signalling systems for that matter ...) the service is delayed by more than 90 minutes. The NYMR Ts&Cs explicitly allow a refund of "100% of the price of that portion of the Ticket price paid that relates to travel on the delayed service." The Gift Aid Ts&Cs explicitly state "It’s an important condition of the Gift Aid Scheme that any donation cannot be repaid under any circumstances".

What happens in that circumstance?

Tom

 

A large ship heading towards a large iceberg ,full of too many captains ,first officers and admin staff but no one with a clue on where the rudder is or what it does …

 

Hardly a donation when I get a 15% thank you voucher. Dangerously close to a payment and do I get a refund and the value of the voucher?

 

So many questions. What did I say a few posts back? The more you put the more problems you create for yourself

 

A fair question but of course one that applies to every organisation that recovers Gift Aid where a service is being provided. I suspect the wording of the Gift Aid
T and C's contains the answer in that the element that is irrecoverable is the donation part i.e. the uplift that the recipient gets. Under last year's system a full fare passenger line paid £ 49.50 whether or not he or she opted to make a Gift Aid donation . If they did opt for Gift Aid (and over 70% did) the NYMR received that from the Government over and above the fare paid. Any compensation or refund would be claculated by reference to the fare paid by the passenger for the service not the donation received by the railway.

 

Sorry, that's just incoherent.

It's clear (to me) from the Government guidance that when you operate a scheme such as the NYMR did last year, it is the entire amount that constitutes a donation. That has to be the case, because it is on the entire amount that the calculation of Gift Aid is made. So last year's passenger paying £49.50 and signing a GA declaration was making a donation of £49.50. There is no split between the "donation part" and anything else: the entire amount is the donation. And from the rules, therefore no refund can be paid under any circumstances.

For the scheme applicable this year, the situation seems similar. In exchange for an uplift (the guidance says 10%), it enables the charity to treat the entire amount as a donation and recover Gift Aid onto entire amount. It isn't just recovering Gift Aid on the 10%, it is recovering it on the whole amount. So again, no refund would seem to me to be permissible.

There is no "fare paid by the passenger for the service" as a separate component: the scheme only works because the entire amount is treated as a donation, not a payment for a service.

You can of course provide a refund for any passenger who chooses not to sign the GA declaration. But for the 70% that do, no refunds are permissible. Hopefully that is all made clear when booking.

Tom

 

The railway receives a donation of 100% of the amount they have paid. That's why they get 25% through gift aid. The donation is not the rebate they get from the government. Therefore the compensation would be zero.

You have quoted that 70% did. If we take this as gospel and back calculating, then £400,000 represents 25% of the donation (i.e. fare) received. so that means the total gift aided fare received was £400,000 x 4= £1,600,000. (i.e. £400K is 25% of £1.6m) Let’s say £50/ticket for convenience so that is 32,000 people. If that represents 70% of full line tickets issued that means that 32,000/0.7 = 45,710 people bought all line tickets. That's not many for a railway that once claimed 300,000 passengers/year.

edited because I originally got my maths wrong. It’s even worse than I originally said.

 

You aren't wrong, Tom. As usual.

 

Where do you get 20 - 30% from?

 

Again:
- Children
- Short journies eg Pickering to Goathland, Goathland to Whitby
- To double ticket sales to get journeys
- add party bookings
And this year, returnees (maybe 20% - pure guess) and their children