Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Malls and Multiplexes - Is this Financial Discipline? I am not Sure.

Malls, multiplexes that I have observed in Baroda (don't know about other cities) maintain a practice of taking back the parking ticket while exiting the mall. This also effectively can mean no evidence of collecting parking fees for the coupons taken back. :-)

Assume, a mall has an average daily parking of 500 cars and 1000 two wheeler; on weekends, given the queues, estimate that the number of vehicles conservatively multiplies by 3. With the discipline that parking tickets are collected back, assume a bare minimum 80% tickets are taken back. Rs. 20 per parking is charged for four wheelers and Rs. 10 per parking ticket for two wheelers.

  • Weekday collections where tickets taken back are = {(500 * 20) + (1000 * 10)}*80% * 5 week days = Rs. 80,000 collected in five days where receipt taken back.
  • On Weekends = Rs. 16,000 per week day * 3 times expected traffic * 2 (Saturday / Sunday) = Rs. 96,000.
So, in a week, Rs. 1,76,000 is collected in a manner where receipts are taken back. 52 weeks in a year, assuming the same average traffic = Rs. 91,52,000 in a year. 

I have seen this in Inorbit Baroda and Inox Baroda at the least and don't see any logical reason why this would be done. If they are worried about reuse of tickets, punching is an easier way, the discipline of collecting back tickets is eerie to say the least.

A petty matter for some but is this just Financial Discipline to ensure no one reuses tickets...I am not sure.

1 comment:

iceman said...

This happens at all the malls/multiplexes in Ahmedabad too and I have always wondered why they do this! Can't see any other reason except that they want to under report revenue - all of it being cash.