Royal Albert Hall — Select Your Own Seat
Since its opening concert in 1871, London’s historic Royal Albert Hall has been home to over 150,000 performances, featuring events as varied as the BBC Proms to The Who to Cirque Du Soleil. With its rich legacy and tradition of excellence, The Royal Albert Hall is now firmly enshrined as one of the world’s great venues.
The Challenge
Patrons of the Royal Albert Hall are famously particular about their seats. Given the size and flexibility of the venue, patrons often resorted to calling the box office to inquire about the specific location of seats they hoped to purchase. The volume of calls created by these inquiries reduced the efficiency of box office staff and ultimately left patrons disappointed by the online ticket purchasing experience. This, in turn, led to online sales that did not fulfill their potential.
The Objectives
This challenge required an elegant solution that armed patrons with all the information they would need to make a purchase decision. It needed to be easy to use, as even first-time visitors to the site would need to immediately understand how to find seats using the application. Supporting this solution required a technical framework that allowed data to be pulled from Tessitura, the CRM and ticketing software used by the Royal Albert Hall. The solution also had to be extremely flexible, as there are dozens of potential seating configurations, each with varying price zones.
"POP's Select Your Own Seat application provides our customers a truly innovative and effective way to find and purchase tickets online. SYOS has been a great investment for the Royal Albert Hall." — Sarah Woods, Director of Customer Relations, Royal Albert Hall
The Solution
POP designed and developed the world’s first Select Your Own Seat (SYOS) solution that is integrated with Tessitura and also includes flexible price zone functionality. The Flash-based application consumes data in real-time directly from Tessitura, rendering that information in an elegant, intuitive visual map of the venue. Patrons are able to see what seats are available, select those that they wish to purchase and then add them to their shopping cart. Extensive usability testing by the POP team resulted in a friendly, easy-to-use experience that patrons have embraced.
The Results
The SYOS application was launched on the eve of the 2006 BBC Proms, which is known for attracting patrons with extremely specific seating needs — right down to their proximity to the cellist. Positive feedback from patrons followed and supported the key performance metrics: a 15% increase in online sales within the first six months of launch; no meaningful increase in “orphaned seats”; and a measureable reduction in relevant call volume at the box office.