reservation system for tours and visits

A tour of a production facility for potential customers, a factory visit for students, a property viewing with a real estate agent, or an organized maternity ward tour for expectant parents-all these situations have one thing in common: someone needs to arrive at a specific place at a specific time, and the operator needs to keep everything under control. Without a structured system, appointment times have to be coordinated manually among multiple people. A booking system brings order and clarity to this process-and frees up time for those responsible for the tours and visits.

What needs to be addressed ...
  • Offering specific time slots for tours and visits, with attendees able to select one online.
  • Collecting information about the attendee or group before the visit itself.
  • Automated communication with attendees-instructions for arrival, the meeting point, and what to bring.
  • Records of tours and visitors for internal purposes or subsequent sales communication.
  • Synchronizing tour and viewing times with employees’ or agents’ personal calendars.

A real estate agent managing multiple properties at once needs to offer viewings without overlaps between them or conflicts with other commitments. The traditional approach-arranging appointments by phone and manually entering them in a diary-stops working as soon as the number of properties or agents on the team grows. An online booking system allows each prospective buyer or tenant to select a time independently and receive immediate confirmation, while the agent can see an overview of all scheduled viewings in one place. Each property can be managed as a separate resource with its own availability-if it is already booked for another viewing, the system will not allow it to be offered again at the same time. The same applies to the agents themselves-the system automatically detects calendar conflicts, so no one has to check for overlaps manually. For agencies with multiple employees, it also makes sense to set up different user roles-each agent manages their own portfolio, while the manager has an overview of the entire team. Synchronization with Google Calendar ensures that viewing appointments appear directly where the agent plans their day.

Manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other organizations that regularly receive external visitors face a slightly different set of challenges. A visit to a production facility by a client, investor, or group of students must be prepared in advance, attendees need to know the safety rules, and the person responsible needs to know whom they are receiving and at what time. Automatic confirmation with precise instructions-where to park, which security gate to report to, and what to bring-significantly reduces the number of questions before arrival. The booking form can be expanded with custom fields-the number of people in the group, the name of the company or institution, the purpose of the visit, or confirmation that the safety rules have been read and understood. Information materials or documents related to the visit can be attached to the booking and delivered to the customer automatically. For organizations where careful access control is important, the system offers the option of having every request approved by the operator-the booking is confirmed only after manual approval, rather than automatically. Records of completed visits can also be used for internal reporting or follow-up sales activities.

Key features for tours and visits

Planning and managing tours and visits in a business environment requires more than just a shared calendar. The reenio booking system combines appointment availability, visitor communication, coordination of responsible staff, and booking records into a single streamlined process-whether for property viewings, visits to production facilities, or organized tours for partners and institutions.

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.

Reservation approval

The standard model assumes that as soon as a reservation is created, it's fully valid. The reservation approval feature brings the option where a customer is clearly informed that they must wait for their reservation to be approved.

Reservation approval

more in the documentation

Don't let customers create reservations online without your say – decide for yourself which reservation to approve. This is useful anywhere a booking request needs to be reviewed first, before you actually assign the customer an event.

The reservation approval feature changes the standard process so that a reservation created by a customer isn't approved right away, but first waits for your approval in the administration. After creating a reservation, the customer is informed that their reservation is awaiting approval, and receives final confirmation (and, if applicable, a prompt for online payment) only once you approve, or alternatively reject, the reservation.

This is useful anywhere you want full control over how events are filled – for example for individual consultations, where you first need to check whether a time slot is suitable, for services that require related preparations to be arranged, or anywhere you want to prevent random or unsuitable reservations.

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.

Collision protection

Resources are a key element of how the whole reservation system works. Thanks to them, the system can automatically make sure that two reservations requiring the same resource – employee, place, or service – never overlap.

Collision protection

more in the documentation

Let the reservation system automatically make sure you never have two reservations overlapping at the same time if they use the same resource. Thanks to collision protection, there's no problem creating a complex range of events and services while still ensuring effective management of reservations for the same time slot.

Resources (service, employee, place) in the reenio system serve not only as the informational basis for the range of events, their filtering, and navigation, but also as an important element in automating the whole reservation process. Thanks to collision protection, the system automatically evaluates whether a reservation can be created at a given time, or whether it would cause a collision due to the resources involved already being booked – for example, if a sauna would be booked at the same time by another reservation, but for a different service.

If you want to make reservations really efficiently, and want to offer your customers different options, services, prices, etc., then collision protection is definitely a feature worth understanding and getting right. For example, if you run a tire shop and car wash with 3 bays, thanks to collision protection you can offer different services (events) across the bays, and if a customer books one service in bay 1, no other reservation for the same time can be created for bay 1. And the reservation system takes care of exactly this automatically.

Collision protection is available for almost all event types. It cannot be used to protect against collisions at the level of individual seats in a seat map.

Notifications

Keeping customers informed is one of the key functions of any system. The ability to send a customer confirmation of a reservation being created, cancelled, or paid, or a reminder about it, is thus an integral part of the reenio system.

The reservation system can automatically inform customers, as well as admins and employees, about what's happening around reservations – you can set up system notifications according to your needs and the way you operate.

System notifications are automatic e-mails and SMS messages that the system sends on behalf of your reservation page without any further action on your part. These include confirmation of a successful reservation, confirmation of cancellation, confirmation of payment, reservation approval, a PDF with reservation codes, a reminder of an upcoming event, and more.

For each event type in the settings, you determine which channel it should be sent through – e-mail, SMS, or both – and, if relevant, how far in advance. For example, a reminder about an upcoming event can be sent 24 hours and also 3 hours in advance. Sending, of course, assumes you have the corresponding customer contact details available.

  • For customers

    All communication and information from the system to the customer, including a reminder so a reservation doesn't lapse unnecessarily.

  • For administrators

    To provide a basic overview of what's happening in the system without needing to constantly check and log into the administration.

  • For employees

    Ideal when a specific employee needs to be notified that a reservation for their services has been made and they need to plan for it.

Unlike custom messages, these are messages with a fixed, predefined content reflecting reservation information – their content or form cannot be freely edited, only when and to whom they are sent can be configured.

Customer database

An overview of your customers, their details, and history is key to any business. The customer database not only records this data but also provides tools for communication, data export, and meeting GDPR requirements.

Customer database

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Keep a clear customer database with a reservation history and a whole range of related tools. The reenio system automatically builds the customer database based on reservations made or direct registration. A registered customer gains the ability to log in and manage their reservations directly within the reservation page. If customer credit is used, they can see their balance within their account and top it up online.

Depending on your settings, a reservation can also be allowed without registration, simply by entering an e-mail address or phone number, which is especially suitable where you don't expect one specific customer to use the reservation system regularly and often.

A well-maintained, extensive customer database is an important marketing tool. The system offers the option of bulk sending e-mail or SMS messages, which is useful for reaching customers with a new offer, a discount campaign, but also operational information or as part of crisis management.

The customer database naturally contains personal data, which today requires a certain approach to how it's handled and protected. The reservation system allows you to set up automatic deletion of personal data after a chosen period, and also keeps track of customer requests to have their data deleted. This makes it easier to meet GDPR requirements in line with the rules defined for your particular business.

If you need to import a customer database from another system or a manually maintained spreadsheet, that's no problem – an existing customer list can be easily and smartly imported into the reenio system.

Storage and files

Being able to add more detailed information in the form of documents alongside simple data is a frequently sought-after feature. This makes it easy to add various documents, confirmations, or photos to information about a customer or a specific reservation.

Storage and files

more in the documentation

Collect the documents you need from customers directly during the booking process – consents, confirmations, photos, or other files, which you'll always have on hand for a specific reservation or customer. Similarly, you can also store documents for a specific customer and have a complete profile with their history.

The storage feature lets customers upload, and the system store, files linked to a specific reservation or customer profile. Typical uses include various confirmations, powers of attorney, photos, or copies of documents needed to provide the service – anything that makes communication and the delivery of the service itself easier, because you already have the documents available at the time of booking.

File uploads are added to the booking form using custom forms as a separate form field. A file can also be collected during the customer registration process, through a similar extension of the registration form. Another option is managing files directly in the administration, where you can typically work with them within a specific customer's detail page.

Google Calendar sync

Having a clear overview in a calendar is an important part of organizing time, especially with online reservations. Thanks to synchronization, you can keep your Google Calendar up to date, and conversely block off time within the range of events on offer.

Google Calendar sync

more in the documentation

Calendar synchronization lets you connect the reenio system with an external calendar. This is typically a connection with Google Calendar, and is set up simply by logging in with your Google account and granting access.

Reservations created in the reenio system will appear in your calendar, but the reverse doesn't happen – reservations aren't created from events in your Google Calendar (the booking process is complex enough that a calendar event alone isn't sufficient). In the other direction, i.e. from Google Calendar into the reenio system, synchronization is therefore only limited – events can be synchronized as time blocks, so that no new reservation can be created for that particular date and time.

Event: Interval

This event type allows opening hours to be split into regular time slots. Customers book one or more consecutive time slots according to their own needs. One of the most widely used and most efficient event types.

Interval event type

more in the documentation

If you offer services in regular time slots (60 minutes, 90 minutes, etc.), this is the ideal event type, offering a simple and clear booking process.

The Interval event type lets you define a time range within a single day and split it into smaller, regular chunks. On the reservation page, a customer chooses these specific time slots, which can also follow on from one another, extending their reservation according to the defined rules.

This event type is typically suitable for sports facilities and sports complexes, consulting and advisory services, wellness, or a sauna.

Also suitable for your business

Concerts and Performances Sports Equipment Rental Museums and Landmarks Theater performance Sightseeing Tours Adrenaline Experiences Veterinary Clinic Balls and parties Self-Service Gym Test Drives Photography Studio Massage Parlor

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.