Part of the Bookings and Reservations kit
Platform · Bookings and reservationsSell the same slot twice and you will hear about it for a month
Two groups turning up for one room is the worst hour in this job. It happens because most systems check availability and take the money as two separate steps, and somebody else can get in between them.
The slot is held while they are paying
The moment someone starts checking out, that slot is theirs for a few minutes. Nobody else can take it while they are typing their card in.
If they walk away, it goes back on sale by itself. If they finish, it is booked. Underneath, we lock the session before we decide anything, so two people clicking at the same second cannot both get through.
Private buyout or per person, set per experience
- Private buyout
- Some rooms sell whole, whoever books gets the lot, and party size changes what you earn rather than what is available.
- Per person
- Some sell per head and fill from four different bookings. Both are normal, and plenty of venues run both. You set it on the experience, not on the account, so a private escape room and a shared axe throwing session can sit in the same venue without either being a workaround.
- Buffers
- The twenty minutes it takes to reset a room is not a slot you are choosing not to sell. Buffers sit between sessions and nothing books into them.
- Tables
- Tables push together for a group of nine and come apart again afterwards, so your floor plan is not a fixed set of seat counts.
The bookings that normally need a phone call
Someone wants to pay a deposit now and the rest on the day. A group where everybody pays their own share. A slot that is full and they want to know if anything comes up.
All of it handled without your staff getting involved, because every one of those is a phone call you are currently taking.