Damn You Alex Ross!
For years now, I’ve been enjoying the benefits of seatguru.com, which until it was picked up by TripAdvisor.com in 2007, was a fairly well kept secret. After that, the associated spike in traffic meant more travelers with inside info but for whatever reason, the handful of business colleagues I tipped off to seatguru had never heard of it before. Well, that’s all gone now since cultural uber-blogger Alex Ross posted a little something in praise of the service a few days ago at The Rest Is Noise…
In all seriousness though, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to have a similar service for performing arts venues throughout the country. The more I think about it, the more it comes across as a win-win-win scenario.
For one, it would be a great sales and research tool for venue managers. Second, it would help concert-going newbies get a sense of where they might want to sit (especially when combined with a good hall preview seating chart feature). Next, regular concertgoers who already have a good idea about what they do and don’t like in a seat will have an easier time finding something they prefer when visiting unknown venues.
A quick spin around Google didn’t turn up much along the lines of concert hall seat reviews but it likely wouldn’t take a great deal of effort to put something like this together. Are there any programming majors out there looking for a weekend project?
Filed Under: Concert Halls • Featured • Web/Tech
About the Author: Regularly quoted as an industry expert in international newspapers and trade journals, 
Drew McManus wrote:
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Adaptistration is authored by orchestra consultant Drew McManus and since its launch in 2003, the blog has become standard reading for arts administrators and arts administration programs throughout the world.
Love this idea, Drew.
On Tuesday I saw Inherit the Wind with Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic in London. Their online ticket reservation page (powered by Ambassador Tickets) has a kind of built-in seat guru–full disclosure on column locations, potential of need to lean toward the balcony rail to see the action, etc. It keeps their ticket holders’ expectations managed effectively, I’m sure.
Fascinating tip via Old Vic Byron, thank you for that! I’ll check that out and see what sort of system is in place.