How does a reservation system work?

When setting up options for your customers, you need to consider not only the group size but also the minimum and maximum booking duration. You also need to determine whether the booking has a fixed price, a price per hour, or a price per person per hour.

Optimal occupancy and customer friendliness

To achieve optimal occupancy, it's important to determine the maximum capacity. You'll need to consider whether your customers can only reserve pre-determined (fixed) time slots or whether they can determine their own reservation duration. If you're aiming for optimal occupancy, it's best to work with fixed time slots that can be booked 100% full. If high customer service is essential in your industry, let your customers, guests, or visitors determine the exact start and end times and factor in any potential vacancy.

Example

You rent out a space and configure your booking tool to only accept reservations in two-hour increments. Fixed time slots allow reservations to be made from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM, and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM. If you give your customers the option to choose a start time, a customer might choose 9:00 AM as their start time and end at 11:00 AM. This means a one-hour vacancy, as another customer can't reserve the same space at 8:00 AM on the same day.

So you're choosing between optimal staffing and customer service. Depending on the industry, customers will be more or less understanding of the possibilities of reservations during this time of crisis.

Check out our various DEMO websites to explore the different booking scenarios.

With i-Reserve you can control what your customers can reserve. Can they choose just a fixed block? Or can they fully control their own start and end times? i-Reserve is therefore flexible, allowing customers to make their own reservations for your specific needs.

With i-Reserve you decide how many customers can reserve a single product. You don't have to check your calendar or Excel while the customer waits on the phone for confirmation of availability.
The reservation system automatically indicates when there's still space available for the group that wants to reserve.

You set time slots yourself by using a calendar (start and end dates) to determine the opening hours and associated prices.
This way, you can manage high and low season prices and opening hours, for example. You plan this well in advance so that you can calmly set the times and prices for the upcoming period when it suits you. You won't have to rush on the day of the change to make last-minute adjustments.
TIP: Plan ahead and bring peace of mind to your colleagues.

When you offer multiple products (for example, multiple meeting rooms), it is often difficult for the client to find a suitable and available room. With an advanced "Search and Book" system, we can immediately present the client with available spaces based on search specifications. See our meeting demo for an example of such a system.

The reservation manual contains a detailed explanation of how to set up the system, and if you have any questions, you can contact the professional support desk by phone or email.