Removing Social Distance Q Holds

If a venue has been using the automatic social distance holds feature, the 'q' holds sold online are PERMANENT since that was the offer made to patrons at the time of booking

As venues reopen after Covid, we suspect rules around social distancing will change, both relaxing and restricting.

However, if rules are relaxed by the authorities, there are two options that you can use in order to sell those Social Distance holds. These are:

  • Full Opening: Remove all social distance seats from the venue map and proceed forward as if they were never there. You are telling theatre manager that no further social distancing will be required - ever. Online, these new seats will be available to anybody.
  • Selectively Opening Seats: which means you opt to release one or two of the social distance seats at a time to squeeze a patron into those seats. These seats you have released may break bubbles and they will be available for patrons to purchase at the box office or online. However, the social distance map rules are still in force; menaing that the next sale may add some other social distance holds.

    This might be best thought of as opening up only a couple of seats without giving up the full protection of your social distance sales map. It lets a few extra seats be sold and requires special permission to be set up for an employee.

Full Opening: Removing all 'q' holds from social distance map to return to normal

If you want to remove social distance seating holds from a reserved seating event and sell the remainder of the seats without the effect of automatic holds, In general, you need to:
  • Switch to a map that doesn't use social distance holds. That prevents them being added for new sales
  • Clear all the social distance 'q' holds that are currently in place

These instrutions assume that there are the same (or very similar) number of seats and general venue setup in the two pricing maps. This does will not work if the venues are wildly different. eg, this is not recommended if you change a dinner theatre pricing map to something like a hockey arena pricing map.

Here are the steps:

  1. Change the pricing map for the performance to one that does not use social distance seats.
  2. On the Maps Tab for the event, Remove the 'Q' holds by:
    • Highlighting all the seats on the map that have social distance holds (anything sold is ignored)
    • Right click, and use the Release Seats option from the context menu to release the holds on the seats you've selected.
    • If you don't want to release some of the holds, then don't select those seats you want to remain as social distance holds
    • resume selling tickets
    • You may have to verify seats if the venue sizes are slightly different

Selectively removing PERMANENT 'q' holds (Temporarily)

Selectively removing social distance holds is a feature you can assign to some employees. It is designed to allow you to over-ride the holds, break an existing bubble, and squeeze somebody into the seats. However, any new seats that are sold will still see the social distance process applied to the seats.
Social distance seating held because of an online purchase are, by design, a little more PERMANENT and protected than other types of holds.

Even if an employee has permission to release these social distance holds in employee setup, they can may not be allowed to release these PERMANENT holds since that was a specific promise made to patrons when they purchased online at that time (i.e. the seats would be held for them).

 

Releasing the PERMANENT Social Distance Holds

Releasing these permanent social distance holds is no different than releasing any other hold, with one exception.

If Theatre Manager notices you are trying to release one of these seats, you will get:

  • An acknowledgement message similar to the one of the right that tells you how many social distance seats you are trying to release -or-
  • If the employee is not permitted to release these special holds, they will receive a message asking for the initials and password of another employee who can release the seats -- and then they'll be able to release the seats for this sale only

The PERMANENT social distance ticket holds can be released:

 

Enabling Access to Release PERMANENT holds

Selected employees need to be given permission to release these 'q' holds temporarily. This is given in the employee setup. For those who are not given permanent permission, then as a one time permission can be given at time of attempted release of the holds from another employee who has the capability.