Occupancy rate

Admissions divided by capacity is simple until you ask which capacity. Every seat in the building, every day? Only seats in performances you actually ran? Only seats that were on sale?

The three answers produce wildly different numbers for the same cinema, and organisations quietly choose the flattering one. The version that tells you something useful is admissions divided by seats in performances you actually scheduled, because that measures the decision you control — what you chose to programme against what turned up.

Industry-wide occupancy is much lower than people expect. A cinema running in the high teens or low twenties as an annual average is doing respectably; a very strong site sits somewhat higher. The instinctive assumption that a healthy cinema is half full is wrong, and it leads to bad capacity decisions.

Low average occupancy is not primarily a demand problem — it is a distribution-of-demand problem. Friday night is full and Tuesday afternoon is not, and the average hides both.

So look at it by daypart and by title rather than as one figure. The Tuesday matinee that runs at four percent is not evidence that nobody wants cinema; it is evidence that this performance should be a different performance — a senior screening, a parent-and-baby show, a repertory slot, a school booking, or nothing at all. Cutting a performance that loses money is a legitimate answer, and one that gets taken too rarely because a published schedule feels permanent.

The pricing question follows from the same data. Off-peak capacity is perishable and worth discounting; peak capacity is not and should not be given away in a blanket offer.