With restrictions on social distancing in place, you may need to make changes to your usual event set up to ensure that you comply with your local authorities stipulated regulations.

We have introduced a new feature that will allow you to set rules that will automatically block seats on either side of bookings on reserved seating plans. No more manually assigning seats, and constant re-calculations of capacities to ensure your attendees are safe. Simply set how many seats you would like to have blocked either side of each booking, and let TryBooking do the hard work you!

This article covers:

• Confirming specifics with your venue
• Setting up your event on TryBooking

For further details on blocked seats, including how it works for the customer and making edits once your event is live, see: Socially distanced reserved seating plans - blocked seats

Confirming specifics with your venue

Venues you have used in previous years may have changed configuration or the capacity permitted on-site based on the local government's restrictions around social distancing.

Getting the specifics from the venue will assist in setting the total number of tickets you can sell per session on your event. It will also allow you to evaluate whether the venue's capacity will be sufficient for your expected audience. 

Should the venue's new capacity no longer be large enough for your estimated attendee numbers:

• Consider splitting your audience into defined categories based on your performance, and running multiple sessions to accommodate
• Consider placing a limit on the number of tickets an individual can purchase to keep distribution fair
• Look for a larger venue

Setting up your event on TryBooking

Step 1: Create the event with the seating plan uploaded:

1. Ensure you have your seating place set as a Venue Template on your TryBooking account. Our Client Success Team can assist you in setting this up
2. From the left menu, click Dashboard
3. From the left menu, click Events then click Create New Event
4. In Step 2: Venue Details, select Use venue Template
5. Select the require Venue Template the Venue Template drop-down field
   
6. With the venue template selected, click Next: Session Times  and proceed with completing Create New Event

With your event created, you are enable Blocked Seats on the seating plan. 

Step 2: Enable Blocked Seats on the seating plan

1. From the left menu, click Seat/Space under Allocation
2. Should you have multiple session times on your event, select Master from the Session Time drop-down menu
3. Click Edit Seating Plan
4. In the Block Seat Either Side Of Bookings field, select the number of seats you wish to be blocked out either side of each booking eg. to automatically block 1 seat either side of bookings, set the number next to block seats either side of bookings to 1
5. Click Save

Note: this rule will also apply to seats you mark as reserved, so that there are enough seats available when a reserved seat is purchased. Please ensure that you reserve and press save seats for each party, rather than reserving seats in one go. This will ensure that seats are blocked between each party.

Should you also require to have seats blocked out in front and behind each booking, we recommend you manually block out seats in every second row to accommodate.

To block out entire rows:

1. Within Edit Seating Plan, From the Mark Seat As dropdown, select Blocked
2. Starting from the second row, click on each seat in the row to change the status from Available to Blocked. Repeat for every second row
3. Click Save