Whether you’re hosting a concert, gala dinner, presentation, or runway show — if you have seating — you should consider offering reserved seating options to your guests. Reserved seating can provide a better experience for both your attendees and you as the event organiser. Here’s five top reasons to use reserved seating for your event:
1. Earn more revenue
With reserved seating, it’s easier to offer a premium experience by allowing people to secure the best seats in the house. A tiered pricing strategy with a surcharge for better seats can help generate more revenue for your event.
2. Encourage earlier bookings
If reserved seating is offered, attendees are encouraged to secure their tickets early when there is plenty of choice available. The sooner people buy tickets, the less stress you have as an organiser waiting for last minute sales right before your big event.
3. Encourage group bookings
Reserved seating encourages people to rally their friends and book together so they can be seated with one another. It also eliminates people using bags and coats to try and save rows of seats of latecomers.
4. Improve the on-site experience
While you may need an usher to help people locate their assigned seats, the benefit of reserved seating is that most people will feel relaxed knowing where they need to be when the event commences. This eliminates the crowded crush of people trying to flood into an event when doors open, fighting over premium seats. It also helps to fill your venue evenly, rather than allow people to leave single seats between every group, which become harder to fill as your venue reaches capacity.
5. Make your event more accessible
By using reserved seating, you can assign seating that is more easily accessible for attendees with disabilities, such as those requiring wheelchair access.
If you’re an Eventbrite customer, you can access our Reserved Seating tool at no extra cost. Plus if your event is free, you still won’t pay anything to host your event. The Eventbrite Seating Designer allows you to choose from existing site maps or design your own to suit your venue. To find out how, visit our help article: Getting started with Reserved Seating and the Eventbrite Seating Designer.
