Management accountant’s travelogue- part 1 – free ferry trips

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry about the somewhat cheesy title ! This summer, I spent about 3 weeks on a driving holiday in France and Spain. I love driving to Europe – no airports, luggage limit is a much as you can carry in your car, and you can stop when you want where you want. I drove just over 3,000 miles and stayed in some beautiful places. During my journey, the old business brain was not completely switched off so I’d like to share some things I noticed and thought about.  Of course, they will be related to management accounting one way or another.

The first thing I noticed was that the ferry trip to France gave us a free trip to the UK. A free something is nothing new – you can lots of examples of free products, two for three deals etc. in books like Freakonomics and Undercover Economist. The deal was simply I got a free trip in a car ferry to the UK for a car and 2 adults once I completed my trip to Europe. On my return, I phoned and all went perfect. I had to pay a small amount for the kids, but we got the dates we wanted. So how much is this promotion costing the ferry company. I guess there are two ways of looking at it:

1) it costs them the lost revenue from two other paying passengers with a car – so a sort of opportunity cost

2) it costs nil, and in fact increases contribution.

Which one would you use if you were making the decision/reporting to management ? I’d go with the second view, especially in off-season. The ferry in question hardly ever leaves the Irish Sea – going back and forward to the UK three times every 24 hours, all year round. In off-season, the boat is not full – but the costs of running it are the same – both fixed and variable costs. Thus, any extra monies I spend – buying food for example – reduces the fixed costs burden. If I were to think about this free trip in full cost terms, I would probably not offer it to passengers as the fixed cost are unlikely to be covered. This would be the wrong decision in my view, as anything that contributes to the bottom line is better that nothing, or suffering the fixed costs regardless.

Tune in over the coming weeks for some more holiday stories.