reservation system for restaurants

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.

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.

Connect your reservation page with Google Analytics or the Facebook Pixel and track how successful your campaigns are, gaining important data. At the same time, you can use the system to communicate with customers in an automated and efficient way, retaining them, motivating them, or gathering feedback.

You can add tracking code for Google Analytics, the Facebook Pixel, or similar tools to your reservation page, and track visitor behaviour as well as conversions from advertising campaigns.

The reenio reservation system also offers a whole range of tools for staying in touch with customers at different stages of the customer lifecycle. For example, using custom messages, you can automatically send a satisfaction survey shortly after an event ends and gather feedback without having to reach out to customers manually. In the same way, a customer who hasn't made a booking for a while can be encouraged to return with a reminder or offer, or you can wish them a happy birthday or name day and add a gift coupon straight away. Thanks to tags, customers can also be automatically sorted according to which service they used, and you can work with them further in a targeted way as part of your own marketing activities.

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.

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.

Give customers the ability to choose a specific spot directly on a map of a hall, restaurant, or car park – whether for the entire event, or just a selected time period.

This event type lets you create a map of specific places and other elements, from which the customer chooses for themselves where they want to sit, stand, park a car, and so on. There are then two ways to book: either for the whole event at once (a classic ticket sale for an event with a specific seat), or for any time period, where the customer chooses a specific time from and to together with a place (e.g. booking a table in a restaurant or a parking spot). It's suitable for concerts, balls, theatres, cinemas, restaurants, room rentals, shared offices, or parking spaces.

A strong feature of this event type is also its pricing, where the price depends on the category of the place on the map, to which price variants or conditional prices can also be added. Combined with generating a separate reservation code for each booked place, a separate ticket is then always created for each place, labelled with its specific location on the map, so individual attendees can easily be checked in separately.

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.

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.

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.