FlixBus ditches open seating for mandatory reservations

Popular transport company FlixBus has introduced mandatory seat reservations in Czechia to avoid the issue of people’s reserved seats already being occupied. The new system has been in force since the beginning of April.

Passengers will not need to pay extra for the compulsory reservation – it will be allocated randomly. FlixBus will continue to offer the option of selecting a specific seat for an additional fee, which starts at CZK 15.

In the past, the German-owned company had operated on a purely first-come, first-served basis. Later on, the option to reserve a seat for an additional fee was introduced. However, this would often result in unpleasant – and sometimes chaotic – situations when people would sit in seats already reserved for somebody else.

The new seat-allocation feature will also apply in other European countries. FlixBus competitor RegioJet has long had the requirement for all seats to be pre-assigned to passengers.

FlixBus has operated domestically in Czechia in 2017 – since then, it has transported over 5 million passengers in the country. The easily recognizable green-colored buses have been arriving from other countries to the capital since 2014.

Currently, consumers can travel with FlixBus to up to 106 destinations in the Czech Republic and tens of destinations abroad, such as to Ukraine, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and more.