New statement from Ms McCarthy, CFO at Disney at the Q4 2022 Earnings Call. Below is language from the transcript of the call. The question was asking about the levers Disney might use in a recession.
“So, you're talking about parks, Michael. What is different is, compared to the last time we had a slowdown in the economy for managing our parks business, we have more commercial tools and levers available to us.
One of the ones that's quite obvious is discounting. That's something that we have used in the past, and we will continue to use it because it is an effective lever for managing your yield. But we're not going to use it to the extent to which we used it during the last recession.
Some of the other things that are new would be the reservation system. So, you know, we manage attendance now. We can track it real time. On many days, we are fully booked now. But we can adjust that and be very flexible in real time on adjusting it, if we if we so choose.
The other thing is we have a tiered pricing structure that gives us a lot of flexibility.
And we also have reimagined our annual pass business model. And we could also have some more flexibility in using our annual pass program.
We also have technology advancements, and this is more on the expense side. That provides us opportunities for cost flexibility. So, we have things like mobile ordering, contactless check-in.
So, those kinds of things give us levers on the expense side. But we do feel that we have -- you know, once again, hearkening back to the opportunity we took during the pandemic, we did permanently remove a significant amount of operating expense at the parks. And that better positions us right now as we go into an uncertain economic environment. ... ."
[Emphasis added.] (Ms. McCarthy, Disney CFO, Q4 2022 Earnings Report, November 8, 2022.)
