Isolated Seat Detection

Isolated seats arise when customers purchase tickets leaving single seats between bookings on reserved areas of your Seating Plans.

Isolated Seat Detection can be used to prevent or limit the number of single seats left on a Seating Plan. Preventing customers from leaving empty seats can maximise capacity and optimise the filling of seats in your venue.

Setting up Isolated Seat Detection

The options for Isolated Seat Detection can be found in the Settings Interface.

TIP: You will need the  Settings Administrator user role  to be able to do this.

Go to the Configuration tab > System Setup > Seating Plans. In this section you’ll see three options:

Which option you choose will decide how seat selection works on your website. 

• Allow customers to book isolated seats
  This is the default setting, which turns off the Isolated Seat Detection feature. Customers can book any available seats and it does allow customers to leave single seats.
  
   
• Prevent customers from leaving isolated seats unless there are no other similar seats available (known as Flexible Mode)
  This option will stop customers from leaving single seats unless there are no other similar options within the same row and area of your Seating Plan. Isolated seats won’t be prevented completely, but greatly reduced. 
  
   
• Prevent customers from leaving isolated seats at all times (known as Strict Mode). Not recommended.
  This will never let customers leave single seats. We do not recommend this option as it can create a frustrating customer experience. For example: for a sold-out performance there are three seats left available. The customer only wants to book two tickets but this is prevented as their selection would leave a single seat. 

Flexible mode

Flexible mode only prevents a selection if an isolated seat can be avoided within that exact run of seats. By run of seats we mean a group of consecutive available seats that are in the same string of next or previous seats which is set when we upload your Seating Plan. 

A run of seats can also be broken if seats are purchased in between the run of previous and next seats. The new run would be based on the available seats remaining within that sequence of next and previous seats.
 
For a seat selection to be invalid and not allowed under Flexible Mode, there must be one or more seats within the run left on both sides of the selected seats, because the customer could avoid leaving an isolated seat by selecting differently.

The table below summarises what would and wouldn't be allowed:

In flexible mode, customers won't be able to proceed is if there are other seats available within that run that they could choose without leaving an isolated seat.

In the Sales Interface

You can also choose whether or not to display a warning message to staff in the box office by checking the box 'Show a warning message to Users in the Sales Interface when they make a selection which leaves isolated seats'. Whenever seats are selected which would leave one or more isolated seats, the user will receive a warning message. This message won’t stop them from continuing with the order but is a notification intended to make them aware that they’re leaving isolated seats.

Further Reading

For more information about Event Set Up and Seating Plans, see the Set up Events, Offers and Merchandise section of the Support Centre.