Orphan Seats in a Reserved Seating event: To leave or not to leave?

That is the question.

In a high-demand event, allowing/disallowing orphan seats runs a fine line between maximising your ticket sales without putting an obstacle in the customer's purchase pathway.

For reference, an orphan seat is defined as:

A seat in a [movie] theatre auditorium that is open but undesirable because person(s) in seat to the left or right are occupied. ~ urbandictionary.com

You want to allow your customers to select the seats of their choice, but often people will leave a gap of one seat between them and the next person if they can.  The result is a seat map dotted with empty solo seats that doesn't suit a purpose for anyone attending an event in a group of two or more, and so the seats remain vacant, unsold.

The default in a Reserved Seating event is to disallow the ability to select a seat(s) that would leave one seat alone. There may be circumstances where orphan seats might not matter, i.e. if you don't expect a full house, and you want to enable the function to simplify the purchase process for your customer. You can toggle the function on and off to allow or disallow orphan seats.

1. Log into your event > Host An Event
2. Tickets > Settings:
   
3. Enable/Disable the Orphan Seat function:
   

From the customer view:

To illustrate what the customer sees, I have selected the seats in green:

The customer sees this pop-up:

Disallowing orphan seats is the common industry standard, but as the event organiser -  the choice is yours! INTIX just wants to make it easy, whichever way you choose.

Need help? Email us at help@intix.com