Feature Request: Improved Booking UX, Multi-Space & Multi-Day Support

[lovelacecreativeco]

Feature Request: Improved Booking UX, Multi-Space & Multi-Day Support

Hey Seatsurfing team — first off, thank you for all the hard work on this awesome project. I’ve been using Seatsurfing to help Cinema & Communications students at our school book rooms in our building for their productions, and it’s been a huge help.

We have set up different zones — podcast suites in one area, and production rooms for film work in another — and a few limitations in the current system make the reservation process a bit tricky. Below are a few feature suggestions and improvements. I’ll start with some general improvements that I think could benefit all users, and then dive into our more specific needs.

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1. Improved Booking UX/UI

• Time Picker Improvements
  The current time picker is difficult to use. A library like flatpickr would go a long way in improving the experience. Ideally, we could configure time intervals (e.g., 15- or 30-minute increments, starting on the hour).

• Toggle for 12h vs. 24h Time
  It would be great to allow instance admins to choose whether to display times in 24h or 12h (AM/PM) format. Our users are mostly in the U.S., and the 12h format is more familiar to them.

• Form-Based Booking + Default to List View
  As discussed in #743, a setting to default to list view would be great — and even better if the container-search-config box were replaced with a more intuitive form-based layout. A clean form interface (ideally collapsible or inline with the list) would streamline the process immensely.

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2. Booking Multiple Spaces at Once

• This is a key feature for us. Students often need to book multiple rooms for the same timeframe — for example, a control room and a recording suite. Currently, that requires submitting separate bookings.

• Ideally, users could select multiple rooms within a single booking flow. A form-based layout (see above) would pair nicely with this.

• It would also be useful to limit multi-room bookings by area — for instance, allow users to book multiple production spaces, but prevent them from booking more than one podcast suite simultaneously.

• This overlaps a bit with the idea of a calendar view in #300, which would take Seatsurfing to a whole 'notha level.

A high-level view of availability across rooms would make this even easier.

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3. Support for Multi-Day Bookings

• This is more of a “nice to have,” but worth mentioning. Students working on longer projects sometimes need to reserve a space across multiple days. Currently, they have to make separate bookings for each day.

• A simple multi-date selector would help, even if it's just repeat bookings on a defined pattern (e.g., same time each day, Mon–Fri).

• This could tie into #361, particularly around exceptions (like skipping a holiday or blackout date).

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Thanks again for all your work on Seatsurfing — it's an incredible tool already, and these improvements would take it to the next level. Happy to test or contribute wherever helpful!

Best,
Brian