In this article, you will find how to set up, customise and optimise your experiences (menus, events, and special offers).
Summary
How to set up experiences
What else can you do with experiences?
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Common Issues & FAQ
What you need to know
Experiences allow you to offer your customers specific offers (menus, set menus, items, tastings, workshops, etc). They are visible online on your booking module and can include detailed information (price, times, conditions). Each experience is independent: you can activate several simultaneously, each with its own rules.
1. How to set up experiences
1. Create a new experience
- Go to Settings > Reserve > Operations > Experiences. Click on +New.
- Choose the Name (in several languages if necessary) of the experience you want to offer.
- Choose a custom timeline color or leave the default.
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Add an image/photo representing the experience. The recommended format for the image is:
- Ratio: 16:9
- Resolution: 1600 x 900px
- Maximum size: 5MB - Add a note for the online booking module. For highlighted experiences, you can even share a menu.
- Adjust the price of the experience and decide whether or not to display this price on the booking module.
- You can choose to automatically request prepayment or a credit card hold for online bookings.
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Click Create.
2. Define the services and periods
After creating a new experience, you'll be automatically redirected to the Affected services and periods screen. Here you can indicate when the experience should be offered.
Experience visibility:
Regular – The experience is visible to customers only if they select the corresponding day and time.
Featured – The experience is displayed directly on the homepage of the booking module.
Private – The experience is hidden on the booking module and is only accessible via a shared link (URL).
Duration and booking options:
Set a custom duration – Define a fixed or per person duration for this experience. This replaces the default booking duration of your tables.
Limit late access to bookings – Prevent last-minute bookings before the reservation or service.
Limit early access to bookings – Prevent bookings too far in advance to reduce cancellations.
- Set the period (dates) this experience is offered or the days of the week it's available.
- Choose one or more related services. An experience must be linked to at least one service to be bookable.
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Click on each linked service to define more precise availability rules:
- Limit the selection to the number of seats in the reservation (e.g. 2 covers cannot have 3 experiences).
- Require that all guests take the same offer.
- Set experience availability — booking must be for a minimum and/or maximum number of covers.
- Constrain the selection of the number of experiences per reservation (again, a minimum or maximum).
- Limit the stock for this service, (e.g. only 10 "Chef's Table" experiences are available per evening).
- Limit the stock per slot (choose the maximum).
- Limit to specific rooms (choose the area(s)). For this, you must have previously activated table stock and room selection. If you do not limit the experience to one or more rooms, all rooms will be activated by default. If you limit the experience to one or more rooms and then add new rooms afterwards, these will not be activated on the experience automatically.
- And lastly, to manage the availability of your experience stocks by time slot, click on List of slots.
You can always go back and edit your experiences and their related services/periods.
2. What else can you do with experiences?
Create an exceptional service with a dedicated experience
Create a service exception. Please refer to the article How to open/close bookings exceptionally?
Create a new experience.
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When you define the affected services and periods for this new experience, select your service exception.
Manage the display order of experiences
If you have more than one experience available, the online booking module will show them in the order that they appear in your settings. Go to Settings > Reserve > Operations > Experiences and you can click, hold and drag the available experiences into the display order that you prefer.
Require a service to select an experience
By default, your experience is always offered as an option for your customers on your online booking module. However, you can choose to make it mandatory instead, for a specific service:
Go to Settings > Reserve > Operations > Schedule and click to edit the related service.
Click on the sixth tab, Advanced Settings, and activate Mandatory experience selection.
Optional: Choose the minimum number of covers for a booking that will trigger this requirement. The selection of experiences will only be mandatory if the number of covers is greater than or equal to this number.
Note: if you set a service to have mandatory experience selection, and the guest wants to book for your minimum number of covers or greater (or if there's no minimum set), then at least one experience must exist, be linked to that service, and available on the day the guest is trying to book, or they won't see that service as bookable.
Seasonal offerings? Disable an experience without deleting it
Need to temporarily remove an experience from your booking module? Want to keep the experience settings for next year (Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day, etc.)?
It’s possible with one click. Simply uncheck the blue button next to the name of your experience.
3. Common Issues & FAQ
Common Issues
My experience does not appear on the booking module — Check that it is activated and that there are no blocking settings in its configuration. Check in particular the detail of the list of time slots.
My experience is not offered on Google Reserve — Experiences are not yet compatible with Google’s booking module. Therefore, they will not be visible there, indeed.
FAQ
How do I offer my experience only on certain days? — Configure the specific days and dates in the Affected services and periods section of the experience.
What image format should I use to illustrate my experience? — See recommendations in part 1 above. The display will be square and in an area of about 350px x 350px.