Ni Hau Ma

You may recall that Disneyland Hong Kong opened its gates in the second half of last year. Not only was the theme park going to appeal to the people of Hong Kong, but also to the hundreds of thousands of increasingly affluent Chinese mainlanders on the other side of the New Territories.

As the New York Times recently reported (may require subscription), the Chinese Year of the Dog started with a bit of a growl at Disneyland Hong Kong. The park had been selling discounted one-day tickets, but their use on certain "special days" was blocked out. The Hong Kong Chinese celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year over four days, but mainlanders enjoy a week of festivities.

Consequently, the park was inundated for three days with visitors from the mainland, forcing guards to close the gates, as well as halt sales on the Internet.

What should they have done? Several years ago I was in a similar situation: responsible for pricing a new and innovative service, the demand for which was totally unpredictable on an occasion such as this. Should we increase prices? Should we decrease them? In the end, we left prices unchanged for the occasion, conducted a post-mortem analysis of how our demand had been affected on the day, and made sure we adjusted our pricing appropriately when next such a special event or occasion occurred.