Maybe but last I knew CMs got only 10% discounts.
I just wanted to point out that they may have other reasons why they will give military special priced tickets when they wouldn’t other subsets like
DVC.
Agreed, part of it is simply "good will" which is hard to quantify in terms of profit. It definitely helps in profit, but not easy to measure.
But the part that is measurable: Ideally, but generally not really possible, you want to charge each individual guest the most they are willing to pay. If you have 100 tickets, and you have only 10 people willing to pay $1,000 per ticket, you sell 10 $1,000 tickets..
Then you have another 50 people willing to pay $500 per ticket, so you sell another 50 at $500. Yet, you still have 40 more tickets you can sell..... but no longer have anyone willing to pay $500... but you have 40+ people willing to pay $100, so you sell those at $100.
Now, practically speaking, it's hard to realize this ideal profit scenario. Those people that are willing to pay $1,000 -- would still rather be $100. (What companies like Disney do, is create premium product variations to give those free spenders an opportunity to spend that entire $1,000... like Premier Pass, park hoppers.... extra more room seats on airlines.. iphones with more memory than anyone would ever need on the device).
But there are still other ways to move towards this price segmentation. And the military discount is part of that -- Unsurprisingly, military members may have lower budgets than many other Disney guests. You're not selling out all your tickets at "full price." But if you cut the price for everyone, then you won't capture the "full price" for those that can afford to pay it, and are willing to pay it.
So you target a discount to a subgroup of the population. Preferably, a subgroup that are unwilling or unable to pay "full price."
And thus, the profitability of those military tickets -- it sells "excess tickets" at a discount, without having to offer that discount to everyone. It's why they sell party tickets at a discount to DVC members -- and also why that discount keeps getting smaller as the parties sell out more often. If they sell out a full price, then no reason to offer anyone a discount. If they aren't selling out, then you can try to increase sales without sacrificing profit, by offering a lower price to just a subgroup of customers.
Smart DVC promotions work similarly -- What are things/prices that DVC members are less willing to pay for than other guests, and target a discount to those specific thing. I gave the dining plan as an example -- DVC members are low adopters of expensive dining plans, given they have at least kitchenettes in their units.
My gut tells me that the MMB team thought up the 5-day weekday ticket as a possible discount program, and then went to the ticket teams, finance teams, etc.... and it was far from finalized when they announced the program. My gut tells me if they had worked in the other order, gone to the ticket and finance teams first, and said, "can you give us some good promotions to give a select DVC members that are willing to pay an annual fee" -- My guess is the ticket and finance teams could have come up with something with greater perceived value. Might be something entirely different than a 5-day weekday ticket, but something.
