Should you charge your own booking fees?

Several platforms let you add a booking fee that you keep — turning the most hated line in ticketing into your revenue. Tempting. Occasionally sensible. Usually a mistake dressed as a hack. Here's the honest decision framework.

Why it's tempting

A £1.50 self-imposed fee on 5,000 tickets is £7,500 of margin that never touches your headline price. Promoters use it to fund rep commissions, card costs, or simply because the big platforms trained audiences to expect fees — so why leave the expectation unmonetised?

Why it usually backfires

• Fans can't tell your fee from Ticketmaster's. You inherit the resentment the majors earned.
• UK law now wants mandatory fees in the advertised price — so the fee doesn't even hide; it just makes your total look worse next to all-in competitors.
• It caps your credibility on every future 'no hidden fees' claim you might want to make.

The defensible cases

1. Genuine cost recovery, labelled as what it is (e.g. 'card & processing 50p' where that's your real cost).
2. Optional services — priority entry, physical tickets, insurance — priced as options, not baked into mandatory checkout.
3. Marketplace parity: your Skiddle listing carries fees, so your direct checkout matching that total (with the margin as yours) doesn't worsen the fan's deal.

The cleaner alternative

Price all-in and let a zero-fee platform make the total identical to the face value. '£16, and that's actually what you pay' has become a genuine marketing line for UK promoters precisely because audiences are so used to the opposite.