Has anyone got any experience of using Tessitura to handle seat/table reservations for pre theatre meals?
We are exploring the idea of constructing a new auditorium on the system with a seating layout to match our restaurant when it is built next year. At this stage we are just looking at how far we can push Tessitura to provide this functionality.
The long term aim is to try and get the table reservation process tied into our website which integrates with Tessitura so that people can book show tickets and book a table at the same time.
Your thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Mike Cornthwaite
Hi Mike,
We have recently set this up in a fairly straightforward manner although I know some other organisations have more complex scenarios. We don't take reservations via Tessitura (yet!), we only take paid for meal packages.
We use a Restaurant Gen Ad facility for our two restaurants with their seating times built in as zones over four screens (eg. Restaurant Daytime covers available from 12:00 to 16:45 at fifteen minute intervals, Evening from 17:00-2000). At the moment we only allow restaurant bookings for those who also have theatre tickets for that matinee or evening show (but I am on a mission to change this in future!)
The Box Office staff can access the plans and add them in for customers but we've also built some coding into our purchase pathway to offer you a restaurant package only if there is availability on the day you are coming. The extra sexy bit is that when you log in to your account with us and look at the Your Tickets section, it will offer you a restaurant package if you haven't booked on and there is one available for that date as an 'add on'.
The problems we face include displaying the start times of the 'performance' during the purchase pathway (eg. if your restaurant opens at midday, it will say midday on certain screens and in the confirmation screen, despite the fact that Tessitura 'knows' you're coming at 5.30pm) but our confirmation emails have been manually edited to be able to display the correct times. The other tricky part is if a customer moves a booking - we haven't found a sophisticated way to track exchanges as of yet, however they are quite infrequent so it's not a huge issue at all.
Our Catering department are set up with Tessitura access and can log in to confirm bookings and manage inventory, as well as running reports such as Seating Bookings to ensure all information is accurate and up to date.
I'm sure other people do it a bit better than us but there you go!
If you want any other info, feel free to email me. I'm happy to send screen shots and talk about pros/cons.
Brooke
National Theatre