Hello,
We are soon going to be making the jump to online Flex subs in Tessitura. It has become clear that allocations would be the most efficient way to do this, but there is some resistance to this route because of some anecdotal feedback we have received over the years. The fear is that the extra work involved would overwhelm our small Ticket Office staff.
I'd like to get some 2011 feedback on this subject from organizations that have implemented allocations for Flex subs, specifically strategies used to keep things simple and efficient.
Any and all feedback is appreciated.
Last year was the first year that we offered online flex subs. We used allocations to manage the available inventory and it can be quite a bit of a time commitment to set up depending on the number of performances. Once the initial work is done the amount of work/time involved is really up to how you want to manage it.
I set up the MOS so that it had access to a specific flex sub allocation as well as the unassigned. This way I kept the best seats for people buying the flex package, but still allowed them the choice of any seat in the house. This also ensured that the flex sub wouldn't run out of seating if I didn't have the time to check on the allocations and add more.
I generally added quite a few flex allocations so that the only real adjusting that I needed to do was before any of the individual shows went on sale. If there was a plethora of flex allocations I cut them down. On the other hand, if the flex sub allocations had sold well then I added more. (We put each show in our season on individual sale on a rolling schedule so this really only applies if you work the same way.)
I then picked an arbitrary timeline for releasing all the remaining flex allocations. Since the MOS could still access the unassigned allocation we could still sell the packages up until the performance date.
Hope that helps.