Hi Mike,

Not sure what the request here is. When early tables are sold out they shouldn't be returned in an availability search, leaving the later tables and any other availability.

If you can let me know if this requests relates to online bookings or bookings made internally and I should be able to further advise or submit your improvement request.

Kind regards,

Ewan

Hi Mike,

Thank you for getting back in touch, I have got the original email nwo and understand the request.

As I am sure you know, we already have quite a few rules you can set for a given day/service in your diary.

You most likely have some of thes already e.g. covers per time slot  (yield management) ruels or total covers available online (manage bookings by channel)

The only option we have at present which would be close to what you are asking for is the addition of a permanent close out. This would need removed manually as and when you find a fully booked service for early tables. This would of course be very time consuming to monitor and not practical at all.

Making a responsive type of close out part of the options we have for restricting online avilability would take some further consideration, as I can see one or two possible issues this might cause;

• If you were, for example, to leave a 7pm table unbookable up until such point as the last table at 5pm was booked, you may well find that customers who prefer the 7pm slot will call the restaurant directly and you would therefore not be fully benefitting from having an online booking facility.
  
  
• Similarly, by implementing a rule which in principle makes the early booking slots the only online availability that you have, you would perhaps be putting those customer who want to make advance bookings with you at a disadvantage, as they may assume that you have no availabilty at their preffered time and book elsewhere.
  
  

I would appreciate your feedback on the above as it would be of benefit in specifying what we would need to do to allow availability searched to factor in the occupancy of earlier time slot. It would also give me a better understanding of the perceived benefit of adding this layer of complexity to the way our availabilty search and online settings currently work.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Ewan