Seating overview

Seating (or the display and selection of individual seats) is key to the ticketing process. As such understanding the concepts and APIs in this area is required before creating a client application for ticketing.

Screen seating layouts

• Each cinema in Vista has a number of screens (theatres/auditoriums)
• Each screen can have a number of different seat layouts (configurations)
• As a result each session has a unique seating display and as such seating APIs are session related rather than screen-related

Area categories

• Each screen layout is made up of a number of different areas known as area categories.
• Tickets are linked to a single area category which means only certain tickets are available for certain seats in the session
• This is important to understand when creating client UI as it must restrict tickets and/or seats based on the customer's previous selections

Seat allocation

• Individual sessions can have seat allocation enabled or disabled. When disabled customers will not be able to select seats as part of the booking. It will be first-come first-served at the cinema.
• Clients must take into account the IsAllocatedSeating property of a session in the API and skip seat selection if not applicable.
• A session may or may not be configured to allow auto-allocation of seats.
  • If no auto-allocation occurs a customer MUST select seats manually.
    • If auto-allocation occurs but fails due to limitations in the allocation algorithm then a customer MUST select seats manually.
    • If auto-allocation occurs without error then a customer MAY skip seat selection but typically a UI is presented to allow them to review/change the allocated seats.

Seat styles/types

Vista supports a number of different seats which behave slightly differently. Typically the seat selection UI components handle the rules around these.

Type	Description
Normal	A regular single seat.
Sofa	Sofa seats are grouped together to represent any multi-person seating arrangement. Often it is enforced that customers purchase tickets for the entire sofa rather than a part of it.
Wheelchair	These represent locations reserved in the theatre for those in a wheelchair.
Companion seat	These represent seats placed adjacent to wheelchair seats and reserved for companions of the wheelchair occupant. Often it is enforced that these can only be selected when the linked wheelchair seat is also selected.

Seat selection rules

The rules around how and when seats can be reserved is highly configurable in Vista selling applications including rules such as:

• Customer cannot leave a 1 seat gap between seats
• Customer cannot leave a 1 seat gap between seat and aisle
• Customer cannot select companion seat without wheelchair seat
• etc.

It is important to note that this logic is enforced in the UI layer only. Connect will not enforce any rules around seat types or locations.