Cinema Seating Plans11 May 2020 11:34
In my hometown, we have two newly-built cinemas, both wishing the last few years, an Odeon and a Cineworld. I have been to both and the seating is more spaced out than the cinemas we previously had in town.
Gone are the side by side, pack ‘em in-style seating plans, but more emphasis is placed on luxury. Seats are like armchairs and are far apart anyway. Some screens that used to have a couple of hundred seats in, now have less than 100 and more space between.
I think maintaining social distancing will be very easy for these new-style cinemas. The older and more traditional cinemas will need to perhaps seat parts of a row and then leave a whole row in front.
Another thing I have not seen mentioned on here much, is that cinemas tend to be a family or couples activity, as opposed to loads of single people. This means that if day you have a row of 20 seats, you could have a family of 4, leave 2 seats, have a couple, leave 2 seats, have a group of 3, leave a couple of seats, have another family of four. That’s 19 seats out of your 20. With just 7 seats not used out of 20, that gives you roughly an occupancy rate of roughly 65%.
Finally, when was the last time you went to the cinema and EVERY seat was occupied? I cannot remember it, maybe Matrix Reloaded! So it’s incredibly rare that every seat is sold out on ANY screening of any film and they run films every single day where seat occupancy is less than 50%.
I don’t think distancing people in large, new-style cinemas is an issue at all, nor will it dent their profits overly. I think that you’ll see less rammed screenings in peak times, but maybe off-peak screening seat occupancy levels will actually increase.
I’m very confident in the future of CINE.
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