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
Hi John A. Moskal II and J. Paul FitzGerald,
We are considering what might need to be done with Tessitura and TNEW to assist with social distance seating and there are several conversations happening across the community about it.
The larger question at the moment is the financial feasibility of this for our members, and whether it is logistically feasible to handle other aspects of the event such as ingress/egress to the building and hall, bathroom and concession queues, and management of lobby space, to maintain social distancing throughout the experience.
So far, where members have done the financial analysis, we've mostly heard that it would not be financially feasible for members to do social distance seating for events. As a result we haven't been moving forward with features to support it.
Would doing social distance seating be financially feasible for you? We're actively listening to this conversation across the community to help us make decisions around this.
Chris Szalaj
Product Owner, Business Facing Products
Tessitura Network
Hi Chris!
We have done the math for 6' social distancing in all directions and our GPs would decrease by 85% for traditional productions. Because of this, traditional productions with traditional expenses would not be viable, however, we are trying to reconceive what product could be in our large spaces with a capacity around 300 guests with social distancing. I have this sinking feeling that a plan will be announced for new programming and that it will need to have social distancing and I will have 3 days to figure it out. I have a feeling that this will be similar with other PACs because all of our CEOs are talking all of the time these days. As much as I don't want you to have to launch a large expensive project like this all to have it go unused I also don't want our CEO to hear that some other platform can do it but Tessitura can't.
I'm happy to talk more offline about it if you all would find that helpful.
Nicole