reservation system for test drives

For many customers, a test drive is the key moment that determines whether they make a purchase. Whether it is a premium car at a dealership, a new motorcycle model, skis, or a mountain bike at an outdoor equipment store, nothing can replace experiencing the product firsthand. But every such test session involves organizational work that can easily spiral out of control without the right system-especially as interest in testing grows and the number of potential customers increases.

What needs to be managed ...
  • Managing the availability of individual test products at specific times.
  • Dividing the day into specific time slots.
  • Collecting required information from potential customers before the test session itself.
  • Managing capacity at events where demand for testing comes in waves (trade fairs, open days, seasonal events).
  • Keeping track of who tested what and when, and recording contact details for subsequent sales follow-up.

Organizing test drives from memory or using a paper diary only works up to a point. As soon as there are more potential customers, more products, or multiple locations, errors start to occur-double bookings, forgotten customers, missing contact details, or a salesperson waiting for a customer who never shows up. An online booking system eliminates this chaos by moving the entire process into a single, clear interface. Customers choose an available time slot themselves, enter the required information, and receive an automatic confirmation-all without a single phone call. Meanwhile, the salesperson or instructor can view their schedule in real time and focus fully on what they do best-presenting the product.

Test drives have their own specific requirements that set them apart from ordinary service bookings. A pre-booking form is essential-the system can require potential customers to agree to terms and conditions, make selected declarations, or provide specific information (size, experience, driver’s license). Thanks to an approval process, the salesperson can review the booking first and confirm it only afterward-which is useful, for example, when the customer’s eligibility needs to be verified or the session must be tailored to their experience. Recording every contact then creates a natural foundation for sales follow-up, whether through a reminder, an offer, or an invitation to another event. From a system perspective, it is therefore not only an organizational tool, but also a sales tool that helps you get the most out of every test drive.

Key features for test drives

Test drives combine precise time coordination with the need to collect and manage customer data. The following set of features covers the entire process, from the initial booking and communication with the potential customer to event evaluation and sales follow-up.

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: 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.

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.

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.

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

more in the documentation

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.

Marketing tools

Growing a business isn't just about the range of services and pricing, but also about marketing. Within the reservation system, this can take various forms, from measuring traffic to automatically sending customers a satisfaction survey.

Marketing tools

more in the documentation

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.

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.

Cloud hosting

Modern and secure cloud solutions are the foundation of efficient operation for many types of applications today. The same is true for the reservation system – reenio uses the Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services cloud solutions.

Cloud hosting

The reenio reservation system runs primarily on Microsoft Azure, one of the most widespread and thoroughly vetted cloud solutions in the world. Running in the cloud means you don't have to worry about your own servers, their maintenance, or backing up data – the infrastructure, availability, and security are handled by Microsoft, which invests heavily in the performance, security, and certification of the Azure platform over the long term. Some selected services also run on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The Microsoft Azure platform was the first cloud solution in the Czech Republic to be vetted and listed in the eGovernment cloud computing catalogue, with the highest achievable security level, BÚ3. Running in such a vetted environment brings greater resilience against attacks or outages, modern data security, and continuous security updates already at the level of the platform itself.

Thanks to cloud operation, the reservation system is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection and can flexibly respond to growing demands – whether in terms of number of customers, reservations, or the volume of data.