As you build your experience catalog, it's important that you have the flexibility to set clear, specific boundaries regarding your customers' booking options. That's why, as you create Booking Restrictions, you will find a variety of settings to choose from, allowing you to define exactly what should happen when an online shopper selects a date for an experience. More precisely, these settings determine how the platform will prompt the customer when:
| They are the first person to try and book that timeslot | For instance, if your tour is not cost-effective until at least 4 people sign up, you can arrange your settings so that the first booking made must contain at least 4 participants. Customers who want to book for a smaller party can select a timeslot that has already satisfied that minimum requirement. | ||
| At least one other booking has already been made for that timeslot | Once an initial, larger booking has been made, additional bookings can be accepted for smaller group sizes. For instance, if a timeslot already has a 4-person group, you may be happy to accept additional parties of 1 or 2 guests on the same timeslot. | ||
| The timeslot is fully booked | When a timeslot is full, you can choose whether the customer sees a "Sold Out", "Call to Book", or similar message. |
Booking Restriction Example
Let's say we run a whale watching tour, and it's our busy season. Our vessel can accommodate up to 100 people, and we have already set Capacity Limits to ensure we don't overbook the experience. Now we want to set booking restrictions to dictate how individual bookings are made. Let's take a look at the settings we've chosen:
| Setting | Rationale | |||
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In the Has No Bookings Yet row, we set our minimum headcount to 5 because we do not want to run our tour until at least 5 guests are booked. For us, it's not cost-effective to take out the boat until we've sold at least 5 tickets. 99 is our maximum because it's not uncommon for us to receive bookings of 25 people or more. Setting a large number as the maximum ensures we don't discourage large parties from booking the experience. |
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Since the customer range we specified in the Has No Bookings Yet row accounts for our bottom line on each timeslot, and since our Capacity Limits are set to prevent us from accidentally booking more than 100 people in total, there is no reason to restrict the number of people on additional bookings. By setting our customer range as 1 to 99 people in the Already Has 1+ Booking row, we are saying that whether it's a single traveler, a family of 8 or a class of 50 booking the tour, we will gladly accept their reservation. |
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Our default setting for fully booked timeslots ensures that new bookings will not be accepted for each timeslot once it reaches its maximum capacity. | |||
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Before departure, our team likes to have 4 hours' notice regarding the number of travelers to expect so that we have time to load the boat with the appropriate amount of equipment and food. We update the Auto Close Timeslots column to reflect this preference. This setting does not apply to fully booked timeslots, which by default are automatically closed to prevent overbooking.
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Please Note"Midnight on the Event Day" refers to 11:59 p.m. of the night following your event. For instance, if you select "24 hours before midnight on the event day", shoppers will not be able to book the event starting at 11:59 p.m. the night before the event. |
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Whenever a timeslot is sold out, we like to encourage customers to contact us so that we might guide them to another timeslot or similar event. To do this, we select the checkboxes in the Show "Call To Book" When Full/Closed column and fill the corresponding text field with our desired messaging. Now, our e-commerce customers will see a "Call to Book" message when they choose a fully booked timeslot. |
