A rough mathematics of Madame Tussaud's

We went to Madame Tussaud's last weekend. I had not expected there to be a queue, from a vague, rather imprecise impression of it being like a great hollywood soap running for the last 50+ years. To my relative surprise I found that there was a queue, a long one. In the time the queue gave me to reflect, some calculations followed..

The queue was about 1 hour long. There were 5 ticketing counters serving the queue. Each counter spent on an average 15 seconds processing tickets. That is 4 visitor groups every minute per counter. So in one hour the 5 counters would clear 5x4x60=1200 visitor groups. Now each visitor group was on average 3 people (A family of four, a couple, occasional larger group). Makes it 3x1200=3600 individual customers per hour.

Now further, Madame Tussaud's stays open from 9:00 to 6:00 PM, a 9 hour window. Peak times are weekends and bank holidays. Lets assume normal distribution of visitors with peak incoming starting from 11:00 till 3:00. 4 hours peak window. with the remaining 5 hours traffic at 50% of peak level. Over the entire peiod that means 3600x4 +0.5x3600x5=23400 visitors on a weekend. Each visitor on average - coupons, vouchers, discounts put together pays £18 per head. So that is £421,200 on a weekend or a holiday. Weekday traffic may be 30% of the weekend traffic, so for a typical week we have 0.3x421200x5 + 421200x2=£1,474,200 per week. Into 52 weeks is £76,658,400 or £76.6 million a year from the London studio ticket sales alone.

With recovery stimulus of billions being disbursed rather freely these days, £76 million does not sound like a lot...But when you generate it out of 100 or so quiet, unprotesting statues, year on year, it is quite a bit..

Of course those who run the show know it all the more better and correctly, and there is a good reason why there are 9 Madame Tussaud's across the world. 3 in Europe, 4 in America, 2 in China, and, my next point...

...none in India?

£76 Mn in indian currency is Rs. 600 Crore, quite a lot of money. More than several thousand people working together generate out of the scores of movies a year at the Indian box office.

Contrast with one evergreen show with 100 unprotesting celebrity statues to do the work...

Given the attention showered on the handful of Hindi film industry stars in the London studio, this is an opportunity someone will well have noticed.

Then why isnt there one yet?Or did I help open some eyes :)