This is just a quick reply, I am willing to discuss in detail further. We are managing in-person performance seating with hold codes and the "not for sale" hold icon on the SYOS. Our pods are just like what you are suggesting. We are watching seating maps like a hawk, when a portion of a pod gets sold we put the "not for sale" hold code on the seats no longer able to sell. We've been selling in-person since September and Dec - January in-person performances are all that's on sale currently. We have TNEW set to not orphan seats (which means the customer cannot purchase just one seat), and there's messaging to call the box office for the purchase of pods of three or four. We have those pods of three and four seats on a single ticket hold for our reps to sell.
You can check out an example on our site here- click "Boxes and Grand Tier":
https://cart.houstonsymphony.org/10116/10208
"Not for sale"SYOS documentation:
https://www.tessituranetwork.com/TNEW_7/TNEW.htm#Topics/SYOS.htm
Best of luck!
Heather Fails
heather.fails@houstonsymphony.org
Hi Olivia,
We did something similar to what Heather mentioned where we only sold groups of 2 or 4 and used hold codes to create these available groups of seats on a SYOS map. I would also recommend naming your Price Types and Zones to say "Group 4 (must purchase 4 seats)" to reinforce the message. Then build a zone map where you can only select the Price Type "Group 2" in those seats you've marked as Zone 2 - Group 2.
Setting TNEW to not allow orphan seats will avoid the single seats as Heather Mentioned. We then set up a Pricing Rule to fire when a patron tried to purchase 1 - 3 tickets at the Group 4 Price Type. The Price Type would switch to our "Test" Price type which was valued at some outrageous amount and display a message indicating that they must select 4 seats in that area. This worked really well and didn't require us to watch the seat maps. Happy to chat more if you have any other questions! Best of luck to you all!