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System Updates

Update 1335 16 November 2025

Auto-Allocation of Seats HOPS Retail Systems - Tickets and Event sales can manage seat reservations, including a new 'automatic allocation of seats' facility. This can allocate seats in a priority order (eg fill up the train from the front, or every other table first, etc), and is clever enough to minimise wastage (eg by booking a group of two on a table of four). It can also follow rules such as 'no sharing of tables/compartments' if required, or allow sharing of tables/compartments if that is the railway's policy. Judicious application of the rules and priority order can also achieve making sure maximum flexibility remains available, eg where different size tables or compartments are adjacent to each other, to use those last: eg where there are tables of 2 and 4, to not obstruct space for a booking of 6 until there is no other option. Seats can still be moved around by the railway if a different arrangement is required. (To support this, additional options have been added to the settings for 'show customer seat numbers at checkout' and 'show customer seat numbers on confirmation email'. Feedback has suggested setting these to 'no' until confidence is gained in the behaviour of the auto-allocation tool.) We are quite pleased with how it all works. If any Ticket System user would like to try it out please let us know!