Hello All,
We are starting to think of ways, as I am sure you all are as well, to do seating in a responsible, socially distant way. What I am wondering is if there might be a way to have the seat count drive how the best seating works. Some venues, including ours, have some odd set-ups, which means the "best option" for social distance seating might have to be more prescribed in advance rather than "block out 4 seats in every direction from all seats purchased".
What that means, though, is that there will also naturally develop areas of the hall where you can sell anywhere between 1 and 6 seats to the same party, and another area where you can sell only 1 or 2, and these might all be within the same pricing section. Is there a way then, to maybe creatively set things up based upon the seat count so that a 1 or 2 person reservation goes to the 1 or 2 area and leaves the 1 - 6 area for a larger party that might come later? As a presenting organization, we do a lot of negotiating with touring artists, and knowing a rough capacity is great, but not knowing whether these areas are going to be sold to groups of 1 or 6 can vastly affect the scales.
At this point in time, I am mainly thinking best seating; so no online SYOS/seating map, but if you have clever ideas for SYOS, certainly I would take that, too.
Thanks!
John
We are just starting to think about how this might work and whether it would be financially viable. One idea we had was to sell sections of the house as general admission with each having a reduced capacity to account for distancing. When people arrive at the venue our front of house department would have a system for seating groups based on distancing. The thought here being we vastly simplify the sales process while having more flexibility at the venue.