Managing seating settings for an item
Last updated: February 18, 2021
The information on this page relates to FareHarbor’s Seating Assignment feature. If you’re not currently using this feature and are interested in trying it out, contact FareHarbor Support.
For each item in your Dashboard, you can control whether or not customers can choose their own seats when booking online, and further customize their online seat selection experience.
To update an item’s seating settings, go to the Items section of your Dashboard, choose the item you want to update, and select Seating Assignment from the settings menu. For more information about these settings, read through the sections below.
Online seat selection options
You can customize how customers interact with your seat map using the following settings.
Let online customers choose their own seats
When this box is checked, customers will be able to choose seats after picking their desired rates from the dropdown menus. After choosing from the dropdowns, customers’ seats will either be automatically assigned or left unassigned, based on your Dashboard settings. Customers can then change or choose their seats, if desired.
Note: If you allow customers to choose their own seats, we highly recommend enabling the setting Display seating assignments on emails, confirmations, and receipts so that customers will be able to see their seating information after completing their booking. Read more about this setting in the next section.
Show seat map at start of booking
Note: This setting will only be available if the previous setting is enabled.
When this box is checked, customers will be able to choose directly from your map after selecting a date and time. When making a selection, they will see a menu listing the available rates for that seat. The dropdown menus will be hidden by default, but customers can still view them by selecting Choose from list.
After a customer has selected their seats, they can remove or change their selections from the map itself, or by clicking the Change button next to the seat assignment below. Clicking Change will take the customer to the “edit information” view shown for the previous setting, where they can update each selection on their booking as needed.
Show dropdowns in addition to seat map
Note: This setting will only be available if the previous setting is enabled.
By default, when Show seat map at start of booking is enabled, your list of dropdown options will be hidden and only visible when a customer selects Choose from list. This encourages customers to choose directly from the map.
When this box is checked, customers will see both your customer type dropdowns AND seat map after selecting a date and time.
On smaller screens, customers will see the dropdowns by default, but can switch back and forth between the dropdowns and the map using the Choose from map/Choose from list toggle.
Note: Displaying both the seat map and dropdowns is not usually recommended. This option may come in handy, though, if you offer certain customer types that don’t require a seat, and you need customers to be able to make those selections in addition to their seats.
Require seat selection
When this setting is enabled, customers will be required to select seats in order to complete their booking. If seats have not been selected, they will be prompted to choose from the map before they can finish booking.
Note: If this setting is not enabled and a customer’s seat is left unassigned, they will still be able to complete their booking. Unassigned customers will still count towards capacity to ensure you’re never overbooked, but will be marked as unassigned in your Dashboard:
Customer communication options
These settings let you customize how customers view their assigned seats. By default, customers will not see their assigned seats on emails or confirmations. If you want them to see this information before they arrive, be sure to enable these settings for all relevant items.
Display seating assignments on emails, confirmations, and receipts
When this box is checked, customers will be able to see their seating assignments in several different places:
- On the confirmation page after completing their booking (if booking online)
- On confirmation, reminder, and message emails
- On rebooking notification emails (if applicable)
- On booking receipts and individual receipts
Below is an example of a confirmation email with seating assignments:
If needed, you can update your seat map settings to customize what specific information to show.
Note: If you use Boca tickets, keep in mind that this setting does not control whether customers see seating information on Boca tickets. To manage what information appears on your tickets, see Customizing Boca tickets.
Seating notes
Seating notes are optional, and can be used to give customers any other additional information regarding their seating assignments. Seating notes can include links or images using Markdown, and are shown in emails and confirmation pages below the summary of all customers’ seats.
Examples of seating notes:
- If you need to make a change to your seats, please call us at 808-555-1234.
- We will do our best to accommodate your selected seats, but please be aware that seating assignments are subject to change.
Managing customers’ seats in the Dashboard
Once a customer has chosen their seats and completed their reservation, you’ll be able to view their selected seats directly from their booking, and manually update their seat assignments, if needed.
Tip: If you need to change one or more seats on a customer’s booking, we recommend sending them an email with a custom message, letting them know that their seats have changed.
FAQs
Will customers be required to choose seats before they can finish booking?
Currently, if a customer leaves one or more seat unassigned, they will still be able to complete their booking. Unassigned customers will still count towards capacity to ensure you’re never overbooked. They will be marked as unassigned in your Dashboard until you either auto-assign or manually assign the customer’s seat.
In a future update, we will be adding a setting that lets you determine whether choosing a seat is required or not before a customer can finish booking.
Why does my customer see the message “One or more of your selections are no longer available”?
This may happen in rare cases when another booking or change in the Dashboard is made at the same time the customer is booking online. If the other booking or change causes the customer’s seats to no longer be available, this message will be displayed.
When this happens, the unavailable seats on the customer’s booking will be automatically updated (they’ll either be auto-assigned or unassigned based on your Dashboard settings). The customer can then choose new seats or complete their booking with the automatically updated seats.
Why is only part of the seat map shown when my customer is choosing seats?
Certain types of setups may use more than one seat map to accurately reflect the entire bookable space. For example, you may have a separate seat map for each level of a venue, or each train car in a consist.
If a customer selects a rate (for example, Private Dining Table) that can only be booked in 2 out of 5 train cars, and then opts to change their selection, they will only see the seat maps for those 2 cars when changing that particular selection.
What maps the customer sees may change if the customer has selected different rates in the same booking. For example, they may see Car 1 and Car 2 when changing the Private Dining Table they’ve selected, and then see Car 3 and Car 4 when changing the Standard Passenger tickets they’ve selected.
Why does my customer see the message “Sorry, there are no available options for this seat”?
In some cases, this message might be shown even when there are options available for the seat the customer has selected. For example, this will happen if you have minimum party sizes set up for a particular item or availability. If you rely on booking party sizes, we recommend not using the Show seat map at start of booking option to avoid customers seeing this message.
How does auto-assignment work with online seat selection?
To learn more about how auto-assignment works with online seat selection, see this section of the Auto-assigning seats to customers page.
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See also:
- How to set up seating: configure item settings section. This section contains best practices on when to use each online booking setting.
- Important notes about seating. This internal page contains more detailed information about how seating works with resources, capacity, pending bookings, and API bookings.