A general admission ticket and a table reservation both promise the same guest the same night, but they make very different promises about space. Sell the room twice and someone is standing where a table was meant to go. Sell it too carefully and you finish the night with an empty section you could have filled.
Decide what the room owes each guest
Before you set a single price, split the floor on paper. Which sections are reserved, which are open, and what happens to a reserved section that is still free an hour after doors. A table that is held all night for a booking that never arrives costs more than the deposit it would have taken to hold it properly.
- Mark the sections that are only ever sold as tables
- Decide the time a held table goes back to the floor
- Set a capacity for general admission that assumes the tables are full
Price the difference, not the ticket
Guests rarely compare a table to a ticket. They compare a table to the evening they would have had without one. Say what the table includes, how many people it seats, and what the minimum spend is, in the same place where they are choosing. A guest who understands the difference books the option that suits them, and neither choice feels like the wrong one.
Keep both in one place
The practical reason to run tickets and tables through the same event is not the sale. It is everything after it. One guest list. One arrival view. One set of numbers the next morning. When ticketing sits in one tool and reservations in another, the work of putting them back together lands on whoever is standing at the door at midnight.
In VenueStack, tickets and tables belong to the same event. Ticket tiers, table availability, add-ons, and deposits are set up together, and your team sees the whole night in one place on the day.
