Remaining Spaces – Conveniently display them on your booking page

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Ever had too many people try to book in at once? Or maybe you run open courses, classes or group sessions with limited spaces. Letting your clients know how many slots remain will help them decide. If you want all of your clients to use your online booking platform, it’s a superb idea to display remaining spaces on your services, classes, and anything that has limited availability.

One on One Services

When you run a business with multiple providers covering a broad range of services, you must show the availability of services. People often book personal hands-on services as a social activity. Whether it’s mum and daughter having a mini-spa day and catch up, or a couple having a massage together, they need to know they can book two or more spaces at once. It makes life more convenient for your clients and you if they can see the number of free spaces on your booking system.

Classes, Courses & Lessons 

Any teacher knows that there is a maximum number of students one teacher can teach effectively. Other factors include free space, vacant seating, and materials. 

One aspect of courses, classes, seminars and more, is that companies will often send groups of staff to attend them. If a group class can only accommodate 10 learners and a company has 20 people who need the training, showing the total number of spaces per session is valuable information. The employer will know they need a minimum of two sessions, for all of their employees to get their training. In the same vein, if an employer only needs two employees to complete a class, they can find an open session that has two spaces available.

Another facet to showing available spaces is letting people know if a place has opened up. If a client cancels their spot in enough time, showing the available spaces lets last-minute clients book the free spot.

Events

Practically every event ever organised has a finite number of attendees, whether that’s a music festival or a marketing conference. It’s also another example of a limited space event that people will want to join in groups.

One aspect of events that display remaining spaces is that you can use it as a persuasive conversion tool for people wavering in their decision. Persuading them to book earlier rather than later to guarantee their space.

This works for event attendance, but you can also use the same system to regulate attendees at the various sub-events. An example might be a “Mind and Body Wellness Weekend”. At these types of conference, there are usually multiple workshops that appeal to the range of people attending. All the little sub-events will take place in much smaller areas with limited space (especially the yoga classes). You can allow people to check the availability of the sub-events they will attend and book in.

Shopping and More

Displaying available spaces can also be necessary for restricted shopping trips. While movement restrictions are easing, we don’t want to risk our health by shopping in packed malls and supermarkets. There are still social distancing rules in place, and stores can only admit a limited number of people. Most stores are adopting a capacity based on 1 person per 8 square metres. This reduced store capacity means that if people want to guarantee a shopping slot, without having to queue, they need to know the number of remaining spaces. It’s especially crucial if people need to shop in pairs, such as with a mobility assistant, or with children.

It’s not just about social distancing. Online shopping has gained significant ground against high streets and malls (COVID-19 closed them all). Consequently, physical stores are adopting more customer care aspects which online shopping can’t fulfil. New approaches like one-to-one appointments for style guidance in apparel stores, colour-matching and skincare routines for cosmetics retailers, mean there is a need for appointment booking and management.

Display Options

For setting up the Display Remaining Spaces feature, you have a choice to make. Do you want to display only the remaining spaces, or do you want to show the total number of spaces per time-slot?

This decision will depend on the business you have and how you want your clients to see the your services.

Two examples:

A beauty salon has five staff members, all of whom can provide every service. However, you don’t necessarily want to advertise that you have a total number of spaces set for each service. Sure, if your service providers are available, they can perform the service, but you don’t want to book up your entire staff with a group of friends all having a pedicure on a Saturday morning.

A laser quest business provides both team events and individual “Last Man Standing” games, but the maximum number of people who can participate in either game is 20. Here, it would be wise to let people know the total number of people who can book in for a session.

If you want to implement the display remaining spaces feature, you can find detailed instructions in our help centre.