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How do I manage reservations with experiences?

In this article, you’ll learn how to identify, track, and manage reservations linked to an experience (special menu, event, offer, etc.) in your Zenchef account.

Summary

  1. How experiences impact online booking
  2. Manual booking with experience
  3. Common Issues & FAQ

 

What you need to know

An experience is a specific offer linked to a reservation (special menu, brunch, workshop, etc.). It can be offered on your online booking module and/or added manually to a reservation.
These experiences can be set up with or without prepayment.
Are you already pretty good at configuring your experiences with the Zenchef guide? Become an expert at them! If you haven’t read this article yet, we recommend checking it out before continuing.

 

1. How experiences impact online booking

Experience with prepayment:

After selecting the experience in your booking module, your guests are reminded several times that they will need to pay immediately to finalize their reservation:

  • At the offer selection step.

  • At the contact form step (in the Summary).

  • At the payment step.

Note: The prepayment option takes precedence over any other manual confirmation or credit card hold settings.

Experience without prepayment:

If no prepayment is required, once the experience is selected and added to the reservation, the guest will continue the booking process as usual all the way through the confirmation page.
 

2. Manual booking with experience

Prerequisite: make sure that the Experience label (under Reservation) is enabled here: Settings > Reserve > Front of House > Reservation Form. Click Save.

How to add an experience to a reservation:

  • Create your reservation as usual. Under Reservation, find Experiences and select one of your available offers for this service.

  • Once the experience is added to the reservation, you can request a prepayment when saving the reservation by selecting the "Prepayment" option in the form’s validation button. You can also save the reservation without prepayment.

  • Your guest will receive the prepayment request by email or SMS, depending on the provided contact details and your Guest Notifications settings.

  • If needed, the URL for the prepayment page is saved in the reservation details.

  • On reservations, a card icon lets you easily see if a prepayment has been requested and paid by the guest (or if it's still pending).

How to add an experience to an existing reservation:

You can add an experience and send a prepayment request to an existing reservation. To do this:

  • Go to the relevant reservation.

  • Click Edit reservation.

  • Add an experience via the dedicated field.

  • Click Save.

  • Click to edit the reservation in the reservations list. Under Reservation info (first tab), click Payment  > Request prepayment for experiences . 

While waiting for the guest to prepay their experience, the reservation will have a pending status in your reservation list.
The covers and experiences will be deducted from your availabilities.
 

3. Common Issues & FAQ

Common Issues

FAQ

  • How do I request prepayment for a reservation with an experience? — First add the experience to the reservation as explained above. Then click the action button Request prepayment for experiences. If you’re creating the reservation, you'll see Experience Prepayment (and the amount) under Payment. Click this button, then click Save.

  • Can I add an experience to an already created reservation? — Yes, absolutely. Go to the relevant reservation, click to Edit, and add the desired experiences.