If your restaurant offers special events that alter your regular reservation availability or change up your floorplan, this article will walk you through what steps to take to set everything up in Host so your guests have a seamless experience whether they're booking the special event or the surrounding days.
Skip To:
- Creating a Special Floorplan
- Creating a Special Shift [Coming Soon!]
- Creating Special Reservation Inventory
- Guest Interface
Creating a Special Floorplan
If your floorplan needs to be adjusted for your special event, please check out Floorplan Builder. This will allow you to return to your standard floorplan as soon as the event has ended, with no additional time commitment on your part. Once your special floorplan has been created, please submit a ticket to the Engage Support to let us know the name of the new floorplan and the special shift (date and times) it should be connected to.
Creating a Special Shift [Coming Soon!]
If the special event will include hours outside of your regular shifts, please submit a ticket to Engage Support so we can adjust your hours for the event. We're in the process of building out the functionality for you to be able to make these adjustments, but in the meantime, we will happily work with you to complete this step.
Creating Special Reservation Inventory
If you're changing the number of parties, covers, or the max party size allowed to book reservations for your special event, please check out Reservation Availability.
- Be sure to add a new reservation type for this event and set up your desired inventory for the included special events days.
- If the special inventory is taking the place of your regular inventory, be sure to delete the regular availability for those days on your regular inventory schedule.
The image below shows two reservation types as they appear in the Reservation Availability tool. The availability on the top is what's typically available for this day of the week when there is no special event going on.
Since there is a special event, the inventory has been added for Valentine's Day. The next step that this restaurant must complete is blocking the regular inventory that is available on this day so that there is no additional availability.
To learn how to block your availability slots, check out Reservation Availability.
Guest Interface
When your guests visit your online reservation Reservation Booking Form to book a table for your special event, they will see two (or more) reservation categories. If you've successfully blocked the availability for your regular reservation type, your guest will not see any availability during that event.
Breaking out of a routine can pose challenges for your team. Let Host help ease the stress by helping you take control of your reservation availability.