SeatPlan talk about their theatre venue and listings site!

Celebrating a decade of raising the profile of 57 of London’s most iconic theatres, SeatPlan continue to create a shared space for theatre lovers to help shape the future theatre going experience of others, their USP of allowing users to upload their seat view tickets a great feature of the platform. As they head into the next decade of their journey, SeatPlan tell us more about encouraging interactivity and accessibility, their newly improved rewards element and what users can expect from the platform!

Hi SeatPlan, you’re a theatre listings website featuring 57 of the West End’s and London’s leading theatre venues. Within the site’s 10 years, what has this meant for raising awareness of our theatre scene?

Everyone knows theatre tickets can be expensive and this is daunting at best or off-putting at worst. But now more than ever audiences have the power to interact, share tips and essentially help each other enjoy the theatre scene as best as possible. SeatPlan is part of the conversation as we’ve become a platform and tool for sharing this knowledge.

SeatPlan encourages users to upload their ‘seat view’ images, with the site having received over 70,000 up to date. What has this meant for audience interactivity? How have users responded to this element?

Historically there’s been a belief that you shouldn’t take photos at the theatre but audiences are increasingly keen to share their experiences across social media. At the time of writing we have just under 65,000 seat view photos in London with more across UK regional and Broadway venues, and photos on our interactive seat maps have had lots of really positive feedback.

Users really appreciate that our maps show authentic views from real people, rather than CGI simulations or curated shots of empty auditoriums. And all reviews and photos are candid; we only edit comments for readability and relevancy, or if they’re inappropriate.

The website also features seat prices and the option to book tickets for a range of shows. What can be expected from this element of the site?

SeatPlan aggregates from three suppliers – Encore Tickets, London Theatre Direct and Ingresso – to display their best prices and availability. Our Discounts page is a superset of offers from these 3 companies which makes it easy to find practically all West End deals in one place. Especially useful considering that official venue box offices very rarely have any discounts.

In the future we plan to do for New York what we have done for London. It’s early days for us in the Big Apple but watch this space!

You’ve recently celebrated 10 years, and have now introduced an improved ‘Rewards Page’. What does this element of the site entail?

Rewards have been a key part of SeatPlan for years now. Users earn points for every photo uploaded and can redeem these for Theatre Tokens or theatre vouchers. So far we have given away over £35,000 in theatre vouchers! We are creating a virtuous circle – buy tickets, add your seat view photo to help future audiences book great seats and save money on your next tickets.

This year we’ve introduced double points on the first 200 photos on each newly opened production or venue. When a show opens, customers book based on photos from previous productions, which are usually helpful. However different shows can sometimes have distinctly different sets or auditorium layouts so it’s important to have up-to-date information, and we hope double rewards incentivises the sharing of that information.

A great example is Moulin Rouge! The Musical which has can-can tables and architectural set pieces around the auditorium. The experience is very different to the Piccadilly Theatre’s previous show, Pretty Woman.

For anyone new to the platform, what can they expect?

An easy to use and unique ticket buying process that reveals more information about seats than any other booking site. We want audiences to get the best view for their money and ask that audiences themselves help us to do this!

Questions by Lucy Basaba.

To find out more about SeatPlan, visit here…