A long period of work has borne fruit and we are releasing this version our first version of ‘Automatic Waiting List’ in our newest version of the web booking widget.
The function aims, of course, to increase the occupancy of the restaurant but also to reduce the staff’s time spent manually handling any cancellations and contacting guests who have put themselves on the waiting list via the web booking.
As before, it is possible to only use the ‘Manual Waiting List’ function so that guests can put themselves on the Waiting List in the web booking when fully booked, but then the staff handle those waiting list bookings manually.
The Automatic Waiting List function in the newest version of the widget gives the restaurant the opportunity to let the waiting list function do the job of contacting guests, assigning tables or other resources, and sending confirmation to the guest.
As a guest, you can put yourself on one or more waiting list times to increase your chance of matching against cancellations and get an offer. You get information during the booking flow about what will happen and how you will be contacted if there is a match.
When a cancellation occurs and there is a match on time, number of guests, and type of resource against bookings on the waiting list, a temporary reservation is created to hold the table (resource) while waiting list bookings receive their offers. The waiting list booking that matches the cancellation and is created first also gets the offer first. The default time until the next guest gets the same offer is set to 10 minutes. You can change that time to what suits you best.
If all waiting list bookings have received an offer but none of them have accepted, the time will be released to the regular web booking if allowed. All to maximize occupancy.
Days with only a waiting list are marked for the guest directly in the calendar.