Configuring orphan seat prevention

Setup > Products & Services > Products > Edit product > Configurations

Orphan seats are single empty seats that are left between booked seats, at the end of a row, or between different seat categories. They are difficult to sell later because most customers book in pairs or groups.

Prevent Orphan Seats helps protect your seating capacity by stopping customers from selecting seats that would leave an unusable single seat behind. This improves seat occupancy, keeps the seating chart cleaner and reduces manual corrections by your team.

Example: if a row has four available seats and a customer wants to book two seats, the system can prevent them from choosing the two middle seats if that would leave one isolated seat on each side. Instead, they must choose seats that keep the remaining seats easier to sell.

You can configure this behaviour in two places:

• Product level: set the default orphan-seat behaviour for a product with seating enabled.

• Departure level: adjust the behaviour for a specific departure from the Manifest when that departure needs a different rule.

The setting applies to seated sales across the main channels, including Webshop, Box Office and self-service terminals.

First, configure the default behaviour at product level. Go to Setup > Products & Services > Products > Edit product > Configurations. The orphan-seat settings are available when seating is enabled for the product.

1. Find Prevent Orphan Seats and keep it switched ON if you want the system to stop bookings that create orphan seats. This is the recommended setting for most seated products.

2. Choose the Prevent Orphan Seats - Mode:

   • Strict: the system does not allow orphan seats. Use this when maximising seat usage is more important than giving customers full freedom to choose any seat. Example:

     

• Lenient: the system allows a single empty seat only when there is no other practical way to avoid it in the current seat block. Use this when you want to prevent avoidable orphan seats but still allow more flexibility for small or nearly full departures. Example:

   

1. Decide whether to enable Prevent Orphan Seats - Ignoring category boundaries. When enabled, the system can check orphan seats across adjacent seat categories, not only inside one category. This is useful when seats next to each other are physically in the same row but have different categories, such as Adult, Child, VIP or Standard. To understand how this setting works in practice, consider the following example.

   Here is a seating chart with no seats selected yet:

   

   With ignoreCategories: false (default behaviour): the system checks for orphan seats only within the same seat category. In this example, the customer's selection crosses a category boundary, which leaves a single isolated seat within one of the categories — triggering an orphan seat warning and blocking the selection:

   

   With ignoreCategories: true: the system treats adjacent seat categories as a single continuous block when checking for orphan seats. The same selection is now allowed because, when categories are considered together, no single seat is left isolated:

   

    

2. Save your changes.

If a specific departure needs different rules, open the Manifest for that departure by going to Operations > Next Departures > Open the departure and click the cog icon next to the seating chart buttons. In the configuration modal, adjust the same three settings for that departure only.

Use cases:

• High-demand tours or events: use Prevent Orphan Seats = ON and Mode = strict to protect every seat and avoid losing revenue from unsellable single seats.

• Family-friendly or flexible seating: use Mode = lenient so the system still prevents avoidable gaps but does not block customers when leaving one empty seat is unavoidable.

• Mixed seat categories in the same row: enable Ignoring category boundaries if you want the system to treat adjacent categories as one continuous seating block for orphan-seat checks.

• One-off departure exception: keep strict rules at product level, but change one departure to lenient in the Manifest if you need more flexibility for a special event, reduced capacity or unusual booking pattern.

• The orphan-seat settings are only shown for products or departures with seating enabled.

• Prevent Orphan Seats is enabled by default, so new seated products are protected unless you switch the setting off. Ignoring category boundaries is off by default. At departure level, review the value before saving if your departure uses multiple adjacent seat categories.

• Strict is the default mode at product level and is the safest option for preventing avoidable gaps.

• Departure-level configuration is useful for exceptions. It lets you adjust one departure without changing the default product setup.

• If customers say they cannot select certain seats, check these settings first. The system may be correctly blocking a selection because it would create an orphan seat.

• This feature does not change your capacity, seat map, prices or availability. It only controls whether a selected seat combination is allowed.