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
Chris,
Sorry for not responding sooner, I was out for the weekend. Similar to Nicole's response, it would not be that viable for a lot of our "traditional" programs. But we also have two smaller venues that have A) resident companies who perform there primarily for whom performing in a socially distanced version of the venue IS financially viable as well as B) the option of moving their performances to the large venue and those performances and/or our normal large venue resident company performances ARE also likely to be financially viable with a socially distanced option. We have a total of 6 resident companies, and at least 4 of them (and possibly even the last two) would have no issues turning their normal performances into socially distanced performances, possibly in a different venue than normal, and be financially viable.
On top of which, while our programming committee does not have a distinct solution right now for our normal programming, they are indeed exploring any and all options which might make it viable right now. Such as the idea of a socially distanced in person audience plus a local paid-wall streaming audience. At any rate, in one way or another, I am very likely going to have to find a solution to this issue, so any help I can get on it would certainly be appreciated.