(Last updated on: November 1, 2013)
This is our recommendation for anyone distributing “house seats” to a promoter. In our industry, house seats are usually reserved for emergency purposes. For example, if we know we have a hit show on our hands, we generally don’t put all seats on sale. We always designate a few seats as “House holds” or “House” seats in case we need them. One of our favorite examples is when a president of the university shows up to a sold out performance for the theatre arts production and no reservations have been made. Voila, we have house seats put aside for just that situation. We generally input “H” for the status field in the seating plan.
In the case where a theatre consigns tickets to a promoter, it is best to “sell” the seats and use a price category like “H” or any other unused price category and give a price as zero (0) for promoter holds.
House seats
Question — what is the best way to do house holds?
There are two ways:
- The low security method:Change the status field on the plan to be something like an “H.” Then, on each chart, the house seats show up as “H.” The seats will look like they are sold, but everyone will still be able to sell them. Teach your people that “H” is for house seats and they better have an explanation if they sell any of them. Oh yes, you also need to use the “New plan for a show” function if you already have the performances set up and have been selling tickets for them.
- High security method: “Sell” the seats for each performance in the section you want at the price code for house seats. These seats cannot be resold until someone goes into that sale and releases those seats. Usually, only the box office manager has permission to do this.