With local and country government changing guidelines on maximum booking sizes, a number of household rules, and other restrictions that affect customer bookings, here are a few settings we would suggest updating to help inform customers.
These suggestions will assist in ensuring your customers are properly informed of booking conditions and your social distancing policy throughout the booking process to avoid any disappointment and to reassure your customers you are taking the necessary steps to ensure they are safe in your establishment.
Update your online maximum booking size to restrict the cover sizes.
We highly recommend asking your web developer to add custom text above your widget to inform customers of the reason for the max booking size and households.
Please be aware that if you have the 'display children' feature enabled, children added to the booking will count in the covers total. If in your local restrictions and guidelines children are exempt from maximum booking sizes, we would suggest disabling the 'display children' feature and ask customers in 'messages for customers' to add to the booking comments the number and age of children attending the booking.
Apply for everyday the new maximum booking size rule to your opening hours. This will prevent customers from being able to book more than they should and from staff accidentally booking over the max size allowed for walkins or telephone bookings. A manager can always override this if required.
Update your terms and conditions to highlight new local government rules and changes to booking conditions or cancellation policies.
You may wish to highlight to customers to view your T&C to ensure they are aware of the government guidelines and your booking and cancellation conditions. As mentioned above, you could ask customers to add in the booking comments the number of children attending if they are exempt from your countries restrictions.
Update your custom message listed on the booking confirmation as another method to highlight important booking conditions.
Use your set reminders via email or SMS (chargeable) to highlight the main points of your social distancing measures and your cancellation policy and to cancel if they have any symptoms.
See our article here on how to gain customer contact details in order to notify of recent changes that could affect their future booking.