I think one of the limiting factors is the number of chairs in the tavern. I think this would be much improved if expanding the tavern seating were not so costly from the tavern silver. Getting to a higher seating capacity quickly is going to be important, especially on the live servers.
Since I can only get to the tavern on a PC, not on a mobile device, that really limits my ability to clear my tavern most of the time. While I am at work, I can only pop on from the computer during lunch. And like the rest of us, I do spend hours a day sleeping. This is a more global server, so others' evening time (or ideal computer access time) can be round the clock. It will be even worse when we get country-specific live servers, on which the majority of players are in a handful of time zones rather than global. The rush for open seats during certain hours of the day when many of the players have lunch breaks or evening hours is going to be very frustrating if they are trying to visit taverns during that time.
Please consider making it easier to increase seating capacity quickly.