Adding a booking form to your website

You can add a booking form to your website, to receive booking requests through. To do this go into your back office and click Bookings > Booking widget setup from the left hand navigation. Or select bookings from the set up module. 

The widget tab will display. At the top of the widget tab, will be the booking widget script, that you or your web developer can add to your website.

Alternatively you can link directly to your booking form URL, from your website or social media accounts. Your booking URL also provides an easy way to place a test booking so you can see how these appear in your Back Office when customers make booking requests.

Form Details

Below the widget you will see the Form details set up, where you can specify the title of the form, an introduction, and the label for the submit button.

You can add a link in the form introduction. If you need to link your privacy policy it's a good idea to do so, alongside a statement that you may contact the customer in order to facilitate their booking.

To do this press the link icon above the text field, paste your privacy policy url in the URL field, then press the tab key and type the text you want to display e.g. privacy policy in the link title field.

In this section you can also customise:

• The text above the button to progress from the availability check step
• The label of the button to progress from the availability check step
• The label of the button to submit the booking (or booking request)

Field configuration

In the Field configuration section, you can tailor your Booking form labels, descriptions & placeholders.

• Label - The label displayed next to the input field
• Description - A description of the field
• Placeholder - Text displayed within the input field

Note: Customer name and email will always be required fields. You can choose to also make Customer phone number a required field, by toggling this option to On.

Booking availability & times

You will now need to add your booking availability & times. If you haven't already set your service times, you can create them by clicking the blue Add new times button. 

To add your booking times, return back to the Booking widget setup & scroll down to Booking availability times.

Click in the Booking availability times dropdown box & select the service times you would like to use for bookings.

You can then set the following options relating to your booking availability:

• Availability start date - Optionally specify a date at which you are starting to accept bookings
• Minimum notice period (mins): This is the minimum amount of notice for new booking requests. Customers will not be able to make a booking request with less notice than specified here.
• Maximum notice period (days): This is the maximum amount of notice a customer can book in advance for. Customers will not be able to book for any further in the future than specified here.
• Booking interval (mins) - the time interval between between each booking slot the customer can select
• Enable real-time availability checking - Enable this if you would like to prevent customers from making booking requests if you do not have any availability. See Setting up real time availability
• Include joining tables - Enable this, to allow the realtime availability checker, to show availability where multiple free tables could accommodate a booking
• Show as - This is the text that will be shown to your guests, if you turn the include joining tables feature on
• Arrival max covers - The maximum number of covers that you cab accommodate to arrive at the same time

Configuration

Next you can select from a number of configuration options.

Enable covers selection - Allows the user to select how many covers in between the min and max you specify

Enable duration selection - Allows the user to select the duration of their booking in between the min and max you specify

If you turn off the duration selection, you will be prompted to enter a default duration for all bookings.

When you have finished adding the details press the save button.

Marketing Preferences

Finally you can add a tick box for guests to agree to receive marketing from you, along with some text to let them know what you would like to send them.

Note: The marketing checkbox will not determine whether customers receive confirmation, reminder or follow emails so you should not rely on explicit marketing consent to send these. It's a good idea to inform the customer (separately to the marketing checkbox text) that you can contact them in order to facilitate their booking.

Once the widget is live on your website you will be able to receive booking requests directly in TabHub. See Receiving and managing booking requests.

If you have a loyalty scheme set up, you can also add an option for new bookings to automatically becomes members to your booking form.