Hospitality: tables, packages and the guest who is not the buyer

Hospitality gets its own module rather than a flag on a ticket because it breaks the core assumption of ticketing. Standard ticketing assumes the buyer is the attendee. Hospitality routinely means one buyer, ten attendees, whose names arrive four days before the event, two of whom change on the morning.

The unit is the table, not the seat

A table of ten is sold once, at a table price, with a headcount attached. Splitting it into ten seat tickets loses the thing that was actually bought and produces a confirmation email that makes no sense to a company booking for clients.

Guest names arrive late, and change

The buyer names the table up to the headcount, at any point up to the door, and can change it. Names, dietary requirements and access needs are collected per seat and reach the organiser as they are entered. The tickets themselves go to the buyer — per-guest ticket delivery to each guest’s own address is not built yet, and saying otherwise would leave an account manager forwarding QR codes at 18:00 while believing they did not have to.

Deposit now, balance later

A package can take a percentage up front with the rest due on a date the organiser sets. The table is held from the moment it is reserved, so it stops being sellable before any money moves. Tickets are issued when the balance settles and never on the deposit — a deposit reserves a table, it does not admit anybody, and chasing a balance from someone already seated is not a position worth designing into a product. If the balance never arrives, the table returns to sale on the due date.

What a package carries

• Inclusions written by the organiser and shown on the event page exactly as written
• Dietary requirements and access needs, collected per seat
• A door: a table can be assigned to a venue zone with its own capacity and re-entry rule
• A price that comes from the same engine as every other ticket — a table of ten is ten paid tickets, so the buyer sees one all-in figure and the organiser keeps 100% of the face value

The kitchen needs this before the door does

Dietary requirements and covers are useless if they surface on the night. They are collected against each seat and shown on the organiser’s table plan alongside what each table still owes, which is what the venue actually needs in order to buy food and what the office needs in order to chase an invoice.