Do you have several areas or rooms in your restaurant and want your guests to be able to select their favourite room directly online? We'll show you how to configure the room selection here.
Whether indoor and outdoor areas, an extra lounge, bar area or several floors: as soon as you have several rooms and areas in your restaurant, you now have the option of letting your guests choose their preferred room directly when booking online.
Example
Step-by-Step configuration
Prerequisite: Multiple rooms must be created under Settings > Rooms. For more detailed information, please refer to this article.
1. Configure emojis for the rooms
Navigate to Settings > Rooms. After selecting a room you can now choose an emoji for each room.
2. Activate the rooms for the widget
Navigate to Settings > Shifts and select one of your shifts. Scroll down to the blue box "Rooms" and click on "Edit rooms".
In this view, you can activate the necessary rooms in Column 1 (Active).
In Column 2 (Selectable in Widget), you can choose which rooms will be available for guests to select online.
If no rooms are activated in Column 2 for the widget, guests will not have the option to select a preferred room, and reservations will be assigned to the rooms based on shift configurations and your automatic table assignment settings.
The guest will not know about different rooms and where his reservations was placed.
Booking flow for the guest in the widget
Guests will see the different rooms along with the available time slots depending on availability. Additionally, a note will inform them that "Selected room is not guaranteed."
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View in BooqIn & SeatIn
The preferred room is now displayed for each reservation using emojis.
Dies wird auch im Reservierungsformular im Raum-Dropdown mit "Bevorzugt" angezeigt.
When manually entering a reservation in the backend and directly assigning a table, the selected room will automatically be designated as the "Preferred Room."
If you need to choose a different preference while entering reservations manually, click on "Show More" in the reservation form.
You will then see two room dropdowns:
(1) Selected Room
(2) Preferred Room
This allows you to easily note if a guest prefers to sit in a different room, even if there are no available tables in that room at the time of the reservation. If a table becomes available later, the guest's preferred room will be clearly indicated, making it simple to move the reservation to the newly available table.
If a reservation is moved to a different room and is no longer in the preferred room, the reservation form will indicate this change with the label "Outside of Preference".
Preferred Room with Automatic Table Assignment
If your restaurant uses automatic table assignment in Automation Mode 3 (where online reservations require an available table), online reservations will be directly assigned to tables in the selected room. In Modes 1 and 2, the selected room will only be displayed using the emoji or in the reservation form, but no table assignment will occur in that room at this stage.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Is the preferred room saved in the guest profile for future reservations?
No, the preferred room information is stored only for a single reservation. Guests may choose a different preferred room when making future reservations.
Are all rooms always available for guests to choose from?
The rooms displayed in the widget depend on the configuration and availability. If there are no available tables in a specific room during a shift, that room will no longer be an option for selection in the widget.
Is it possible to confirm the selected room in the confirmation emails?
Currently, this feature is not available. However, a new MergeTag will be introduced soon that will allow you to display the selected or preferred room in confirmation emails.
Is it possible to add additional descriptions or images for the rooms?
Currently, this feature is not available. However, you can use the "Additional Info in Widget" field in the shift settings to include further descriptions of the rooms, including images.
Will I receive a notification in the backend if a reservation is placed outside of the preferred room?
You can easily identify if a reservation is placed outside of the preferred room by checking the reservation list in BooqIn/SeatIn. Once you select a specific room, the corresponding emojis will indicate any reservations that do not match the guest's preference. Additional notification features are currently in development.