reservation system for conferences and trade fairs

Organizing a conference or trade fair is a demanding logistical undertaking where every detail shapes the attendees’ overall impression. Registration and check-in are the first things every visitor experiences-and they play the biggest role in determining whether that experience feels professional or chaotic. An online booking system makes it possible to manage the entire process, from initial registration to admission to the event, smoothly, clearly, and without unnecessary administration.

What needs to be addressed ...
  • Ticket sales across multiple price categories.
  • Collection of detailed registration information beyond standard details.
  • Registration for accompanying workshops, lecture sessions, or meetings with limited capacity.
  • Add-on sales of services-parking spaces, printed materials, reception attendance, networking, and printed certificates of attendance.
  • Fast and seamless admission without queues or paper lists.
  • Automated communication with attendees at different stages.
  • Exporting an overview of registered attendees for internal purposes and further use.

The success of a conference or trade fair depends on dozens of interconnected decisions, but registration and admission logistics are the foundation without which the rest cannot function properly. Organizers who manage registrations manually or through generic forms encounter the same problems-lost registrations, unclear payments, queues at the entrance, and hours spent sorting data in spreadsheets. An online booking system puts this foundation firmly in place and frees up the team to focus on tasks that truly require a human touch. Customers register, pay, receive their tickets, and are checked in within seconds upon arrival-all without email correspondence or manual confirmation. For larger events with dozens or hundreds of attendees, this is not an added convenience but a practical necessity.

Conferences today require flexibility in what they offer. The option to add a specific workshop to a ticket, select catering, or purchase a certificate is a natural expectation for many attendees, not a bonus. A system that can offer all this directly as part of the registration process simplifies organization while also creating opportunities for increased revenue. The same applies to trade fairs-whether it is admission for the general public, registration for industry professionals, or special access for exhibitors, each category can have its own price, form, and communication, while the organizer has everything together in a single overview. Exports of complete attendee data can then be used not only internally, but also for partner reporting, printing name badges, or other follow-up activities.

Key features for conferences and trade fairs

Below are the features that make organizing conferences and trade fairs much easier. It is not just about selling tickets-it is about fully managing the registration process, from the first website visit through ticket and workshop selection to check-in at the entrance, all with minimal manual intervention by the organizers.

Online payments

Being able to pay for a reserved service through an online payment gateway is now the standard. Customers today are used to paying quickly and securely in online shops and expect the same comfort when booking or ordering services online.

Online payments

more in the documentation

Let customers pay for their reservation or tickets online right away, before the service is provided – faster, more convenient, and with the certainty that the reservation will be paid, and therefore used.

The reenio system allows you to require prepayment as part of the booking process, so a customer's reservation only becomes valid once paid. You decide yourself whether online payment is mandatory, or whether you leave it up to the customer to pay on site. With mandatory payment, you can set a deadline by which a new reservation must be paid, otherwise it is automatically cancelled and the slot is released for another customer.

For online payments you can choose from several supported payment gateways. The reservation system then handles the technical connection and communication with the chosen gateway, but all business and formal matters are handled directly with the payment gateway provider – you keep the money you receive under your own control, in your own merchant account.

  • GoPay

    An online payment gateway offering a wide range of payment methods, from card payments to fast bank transfers, Apple Pay, or Google Pay.

  • Comgate

    Another Czech payment gateway that also operates in other European countries. Its payment methods vary and cover common needs.

  • Stripe

    A global payment gateway that is becoming increasingly popular. It offers fast integration and approval, so you can start accepting payments within minutes.

  • Bank transfer

    A special type of payment method where the reservation system itself can generate a QR code for payment and then automatically verify and match received payments.

After a successful payment, the system automatically marks the reservation as paid and generates and sends the customer a payment document. The reenio system offers a wide range of options and features for working with payments, including exports, refunds, and more. However, it should be noted that reenio itself is not an accounting system.

Tickets

Even though the reservation system works with the concept of a "reservation", it can just as well handle everything related to tickets. A ticket is simply a specific form of what a reservation means within a particular business.

Tickets

A reservation in the reenio system doesn't have to mean just a booked slot in a calendar – it can also mean a ticket. It's just a different way of looking at what you're offering customers, what they're buying, and how the whole process then unfolds.

Every reservation carries everything you'd expect from a ticket – a unique code, a QR code for quick check-in, and information about the time and exactly what it can be used for. From this perspective, selling tickets is a fundamental way of using the reservation system. A ticket is often understood as a document that, for example, matches the visual identity of an event and also contains additional information. All of this can also be provided in the reenio system, where you can create your own design for the reservation confirmation = the look and content of the ticket.

The customer receives their ticket by e-mail right after payment, can save it to their Apple or Google Wallet, and you simply scan it with the mobile app at the entrance. If you want to sell tickets for events, it's really nothing more than a reservation with online payment and a custom confirmation design.

Custom booking forms

When the standard details collected from a customer during booking aren't enough, the solution is simple. Booking forms can be extended with custom fields that a customer may or must fill in while booking.

Custom booking forms

more in the documentation

Find out everything you need about customers right at the time of booking – extend the standard form with your own fields and tailor the form to a specific event and type of service.

Custom booking forms let you extend the standard reservation form (name, e-mail, phone) with any additional fields your business needs – from checkboxes, through selecting from options, entering text, all the way to uploading a file (e.g. a photo of the customer or a scanned confirmation). It's also possible to collect specialized data, where the system takes care of validating the correct format.

Individual custom fields can be required, or only shown based on the reserved capacity or a previously selected value. A special group is formed by form fields that affect the reservation price – which makes it easy to handle, for example, a surcharge for renting equipment, a discount for members, or a price adjustment for an above-standard scope of service.

A form can be assigned to a single event, or set globally so it automatically applies to all events on the reservation page. Working with custom forms is therefore very simple while also offering very broad possibilities for use.

Data entered in a custom booking form is saved as part of the specific reservation and can also be included in an export to Excel, and worked with further as needed.

Event: One single event

The easiest event type to set up and use, offering a booking for a specific, fixed time from and to, including an optional capacity limit. A customer always books the entire listed event.

Event: One single event

more in the documentation

Offer customers a reservation for a fixed time slot with a limited capacity – ideal wherever more than one person needs to be able to attend an event, but not more than you're able to serve.

With the Full single event type, a customer always books the whole event as set, i.e. a fixed time slot from – to, with no option to choose a custom time. This is typically an event with a higher capacity, taking place at a fixed time – suitable for sports events and lessons, seminars, lectures, concerts, exhibition openings, one-off courses, workshops, or tours.

For this type you can also enable a so-called waiting list, where a customer can still express interest in booking even after all available capacity has been used up. This event type also supports creating recurring reservations and supports online events.

Dynamic pricing

Conditional prices, price variants, discount codes, and so on – this is all part of the extensive options for how the price of a reservation is calculated. Combined with online payment, it's a significant business and marketing tool.

Dynamic pricing

more in the documentation

Set prices for customers exactly to match your offering – different customer categories, discounts for longer bookings or bookings made well in advance, discount coupons, and any combination of all of these.

The price of a reservation in the reenio system doesn't have to be just a single fixed number – the system provides tools to price your offering intelligently and precisely, in line with how your business works. You can set different pricing categories, for example admission for an individual or a family, which are then automatically factored into the reservation based on the customer's choice.

On top of that, you can tailor the price to the specific circumstances of the reservation – for example, giving a discount to customers who book well in advance, or setting a different rate for a longer stay or rental. Thanks to a custom booking form, you can then easily offer add-on services or a discount for a selected group of customers.

For marketing campaigns and controlled access to selected events, discount coupons are useful, with their own settings for validity and number of uses – whether it's a one-off promotion, a loyalty discount, or a closed group for whom you only open up an event when the corresponding code is used.

The power of this pricing approach lies in the fact that all these tools can be combined and used together as needed. The final price always reflects exactly how you want to offer your services and what the customer themselves chooses.

Mobile check-in app

The mobile app for Android and iOS is a significant addition for running your business efficiently and making full use of the reservation system – especially if you're using QR codes for reservations and tickets. Checking and checking in a reservation then becomes a matter of seconds.

Mobile check-in app

more in the documentation

The reenio mobile app (Android and iOS) is mainly used for quick and easy on-the-spot online check-in of individual reservations and tickets. It also includes an overview calendar of reservations and a customer list, so a reservation can be found even without knowing the specific code.

The app is therefore intended for administrators or other users (e.g. temp staff, front-of-house staff, receptionists) who need fast, hands-on access to data and information. This also means that a user doesn't need access to the full system administration to log into the app – a special authorization QR code can be used to log in instead.

A reservation code is primarily scanned as a QR code using the mobile device's camera, but it can also be entered manually or looked up. For larger numbers of visitors, it's a good idea to get a mobile device with a hardware laser code scanner – scanning is significantly faster and more reliable. Combined with automatic check-in mode, where, if everything about the reservation/ticket is in order, the code is automatically marked as checked in a moment after scanning, this becomes a very fast helper.

The app can also check in individual places within a single reservation (e.g. specific seats), and besides reservations it can also handle redeeming coupons or punch cards by scanning their code.

Google and Apple Wallet

Today's customers are used to having everything quickly available at hand. Thanks to support for Google and Apple Wallet, they can save a ticket, reservation QR code, or coupon directly to their phone without needing to print a document or search for an e-mail.

Google and Apple Wallet

Offer customers the option to save their ticket, reservation, or coupon directly to their phone, in an app they already know and use – Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.

The reenio system lets customers add the QR code for a reservation or ticket directly to their Apple or Google system wallet, so the customer doesn't need to look up a confirmation e-mail or print a document – the code is saved right on their phone, where they can easily find it when they arrive.

The same option can also be used with coupons – meaning QR codes for gift coupons, discount codes, and punch cards. For a coupon that's drawn down gradually, this solution has one huge advantage: the customer can see their current balance directly in their phone's wallet.

For the customer, this is primarily about convenience and a lower risk of losing or forgetting a ticket or coupon – for you, it means a somewhat smoother and faster check-in process for tickets and coupons.

Exports

Data is the foundation – but a universal system doesn't always provide data in the form needed for a specific situation, which is why exporting data is such a useful feature. Once exported, you can work with the data directly.

Exports

Easily get data about reservations and customers out of the reenio system, and then work with it in Excel, using AI, or use it for importing into other systems, for example for e-mail marketing.

Overviews of reservations and customers can be easily exported to Excel at any time, including data from your own custom booking and registration forms.

Besides a simple data export, the reservation system can also be connected to other systems using the API or webhooks, letting you pass data programmatically and in real time, as well as work with it at the level of its data structure.

Custom messages

Automating communication with customers based on specific requirements and events brings a powerful tool that supports and improves how well informed your customers are, simplifies processes, and also improves your marketing work and how you gather feedback.

Custom messages

more in the documentation

Automate communication with customers exactly to your needs – from reminders, through satisfaction surveys, to marketing offers, in the form of e-mails or SMS messages. The possibilities of custom messages are, however, far broader. Custom messages can also be used to notify an external system or device, or to inform administrators or employees.

Custom messages allow you to set up sending of messages tied to a specific event in the reservation process and a corresponding moment in time. The event can be automatic (creation of a reservation, end of an event, etc.) or tied to a manual change of a reservation's status in the administration or mobile app.

  • E-mail

    The basic type of custom message, where a text e-mail message with your own content is sent.

  • SMS

    A popular message type which, although limited in size and format, offers greater delivery certainty.

  • Webhook

    A technical solution for notifying an external system that some event has occurred. Typically used for various automations.

  • Mobile app

    A quick way to send a notification directly into a specific reenio mobile app.

  • Smartemailing

    If simple text content for an e-mail isn't enough, you can use templates and sending via the Smartemailing tool.

Unlike system notifications, which have a fixed structure and content, with custom messages you decide the content and purpose yourself – typically these are used for a thank-you or a request for feedback after an event ends, a reminder before an upcoming event, a marketing offer, booking instructions, birthday or name-day wishes (even with a gift coupon), or a reminder to a customer who hasn't booked for a while.

The content of custom messages can also contain so-called placeholder variables, which are replaced with the corresponding value when the message is actually sent, e.g. the customer's name or the reservation's start time. Custom messages are assigned to events via message groups, so there's no need to set up rules for every event separately, while still keeping flexibility for different situations and needs.

A special feature of certain message types and specific events is the ability to add dynamic elements to a custom message – a satisfaction survey or a generated coupon code. It's entirely up to you how you integrate these options into your marketing activities.

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Are you wondering if an online reservation system is right for you? Check out the FREQUENT QUESTIONS or the DOCUMENTATION pages and try out the reenio system.