[vlw]

What's ironic is that OP seems to work for an audit trail organization.

Another way I've done similar things in the past is soft-deletion (if required in the first place) of immutable data; A done deal, finished transaction. A paid-for seat reservation in this example.

And hard-deletion of runtime data. Temporary lock on seats are only relevant right now and don't serve any long-term purpose more than a log of the event.