Venues & Seating

Some events sell a headcount — twenty vendors, any twenty. Others sell a specific place — booth A1, table 12, seat R4-7. Venue tools are for the second kind. They let you build a booth inventory, draw it on a real map of your site, lay out seats and tables in a room, and reserve exact locations against a date.

This is the toolset for indoor markets with fixed footprints, event halls, theaters, and anywhere the answer to “where am I?” needs to be more precise than “somewhere at the market.”

How do I turn a market into a venue?

A venue in VendorStreet is a market with its booking mode set to Spaces. There’s no separate object to create.

Go to Market → Edit → Basics and set Booking mode to Spaces. The in-app help puts it directly: “Capacity mode limits bookings by count; Spaces mode limits by named booths.”

VendorStreet will warn you when you switch, because changing the mode affects existing bookings and space assignments. Do it before you take real bookings, not after.

Once you’re in Spaces mode, the Spaces & Map tab comes alive and the spaces endpoints start accepting work. See Markets for the mode comparison.

What are regions, spaces, and layout objects?

Three nested layers, from coarse to fine:

Regions are the big divisions of your site — “Building A,” “North Lawn,” “Upstairs.” Add them under the Regions card with a name and an optional description. Regions are reorderable and act as a filter everywhere else, including on your public map.

Spaces are your booths — the sellable inventory. The Spaces inventory card lists them by Code, Name, Size, Base price, and Status. When adding one you set:

• Space code — the identifier vendors and staff use (A1, NW-04).
• Name (optional) — a friendlier label.
• Width (feet) and Depth (feet) — the footprint.
• Base price (USD) — what this booth costs. This is where a Spaces-mode market gets its base price for pricing rules.
• Region — which region it belongs to.

Building a row of identical booths? Use Duplicate along row — set the number of Copies and a Direction (Right or Left) and VendorStreet generates the rest.

Layout objects are seats, tables, and sections placed inside a space. That’s the seating layer, covered below.

How do I put my booths on a map?

Under the Map editor card — “Draw polygons to map spaces to the uploaded layout image.”

1. Upload a site plan or overhead image as PNG or JPEG (Upload map, or Replace map later).
2. Select a space from your inventory.
3. Drag a rectangle over its position on the map — or switch to the polygon tool and click out each corner for irregular shapes.
4. Repeat for each booth.

The result is a real map of your market that visitors can browse at /markets/<your-slug>/map. It supports pan and zoom, filtering by region, and a legend showing Available, Booked, Locked, and Assigned to you.

Note that the public map is read-only — visitors can look and filter, but nothing is booked from that page.

How do I set up a seating chart?

Seating lives inside a space, under the Seating layout card. You’ll need a map image uploaded and selected for that space first — the layout is drawn on top of it.

Start by choosing a Seating model:

• Not configured — no seating.
• Open / general admission — “capacity only, no seat identity to lay out.” Picks a headcount and hides the canvas entirely.
• Operator-assigned seats — you place people in specific seats.
• Customer seat selection — seat-level identity intended for customer picking.
• Table reservations — reservations are made by table rather than by seat.

Any model other than open reveals the layout canvas: “Place seats and tables on the space map below, then save the layout.”

Placing seats, tables, and sections

The canvas toolbar gives you Add seat, Add table, and Add section. Place objects by dragging them onto the map image; a live counter tracks how many are placed and how many are queued for removal. Click Save layout when you’re done.

Each object type behaves differently:

• Seat — a single point. Has a Label and an optional Section assignment (defaults to Unassigned).
• Table — a rectangle with a Label and a Capacity.
• Section — a rectangle grouping seats, with a Label, a Capacity, and a Sale mode.

Remove deletes the selected object.

What are sale modes, and which should I use?

Sale mode is set per section and controls how that part of the room is sold. It overrides the space’s seating model, so you can mix approaches in one room — reserved seats down front, general admission at the back, a private suite sold whole.

• Assigned — pick individual seats. Buyers get specific seats. Capacity is optional here because it derives from the seats you’ve tagged into the section.
• General admission — buy N up to capacity. No seat identity; people buy a quantity against a cap. Requires a capacity of at least 1.
• Whole — sold as one unit. The entire section goes to one buyer — a suite, a private room, a VIP box. Requires a capacity of at least 1.

How does reserving seats work?

Open the Reserve seats card — “Hold and book specific seats or tables on [space] for a scheduled occurrence, with live availability.” It appears once a seating model is set to something other than open.

1. Pick an Occurrence — which scheduled date you’re reserving against. See Scheduling.
2. Click seats or tables on the map to select them. For general admission sections, use the − and + steppers instead; each row shows how many of the capacity are left.
3. Your picks appear in the Selection panel, each with a Remove link and a live countdown.
4. Optionally add add-ons — an add-ons total is shown as you go.
5. Click Confirm reservation.

How long do seat holds last?

Ten minutes. The moment you select a seat it’s held against everyone else, and the countdown in the Selection panel shows the time remaining. When a hold expires, the selection clears and the seat returns to the pool. The duration is fixed and not currently configurable.

Because two people can be working the same room, you’ll occasionally hit a conflict. VendorStreet is explicit about it rather than silently reassigning: “One or more selected seats were just booked by someone else”, “This section was just sold out by someone else”, or “This selection’s holds have expired. Please re-select your seats.” Availability refreshes automatically and you pick again.

Do seat reservations take payment?

No. Confirming a seat reservation is an inventory and roster operation, not a sale. No charge is created and no card is taken at that step.

There is also no per-seat or per-table price field — booths carry a base price, individual layout objects do not. The only money that attaches to a seat reservation is add-ons, which are priced from your catalog and recorded against the reservation.

Practically, this means the seating tools are for managing who sits where, with payment handled through your normal invoicing and billing flow.

Who can reserve seats?

The seat hold and confirm flow is operator-side only. You and your staff use it from inside the market admin; there is no public seat-picking page. The public map at /markets/<your-slug>/map shows booth polygons only — it does not render seats, tables, or sections, and nothing can be booked from it.

If you’re taking seat requests from the public today, the workflow is: collect them however you already do, then reserve on their behalf in the Reserve seats tool.

Common gotchas

• A map image is required before you can lay out seating. “Upload and select a map for this space to lay out seating.”
• Holds expire in ten minutes, with no warning beyond the countdown. Long phone bookings will lose their selection mid-call.
• Section sale mode beats the space’s seating model. If a section is behaving unexpectedly, check its sale mode before the space setting.
• General admission and whole sections need an explicit capacity; assigned sections derive theirs from tagged seats.
• Switching a live market’s booking mode is disruptive. Existing bookings and space assignments are affected.
• Booth polygons and seating layouts are stored separately. Drawing booths on the map doesn’t create seats, and vice versa.

Next steps

• Add-ons — sell extras against specific sections, seat types, or sale modes
• Pricing Rules — how booth base prices feed the invoice
• Reporting & KPIs — venue occupancy and attach rate
• Scheduling — the occurrences you reserve against