Virtual Rostering: offer group and private tours/classes on a first-come, first-served basis.

Over the last few months we have had many inquiries asking for a very unique feature that would allow booking of resources for a group tour/class (where you accept multiple bookings from different customers) or for a private tour/lesson (where you accept one single booking, even with multiple participants), on a first-come, first-served basis.

Today, we are extremely excited to announce that this major feature is now live! Virtual Rostering will allow you to optimize the use of resources, maximise your revenue and make your customers happy.

What exactly is Virtual Rostering?

Virtual Rostering means that resources - for example your guides - are not actually allocated to a tour/class until a booking is made for that specific tour/class.

With Virtual Rostering, you virtually assign resources to a tour/class, without making them unavailable for other tours/classes running at the same time.

Resources are available for bookings on a first-come, first-served basis: the first booking for a specific tour/class will automatically cancel other group or private tours/classes using the same resources in virtual rostering.

Still not clear? Let's try with an example

The tour company Lovin’ Fishing offers private (one booking per tour) and group boat tours (multiple bookings per tour) with different itineraries, duration and prices.

However Lovin’ Fishing has only one boat, which can be used for one tour at a time.

Lovin’ Fishing can set up its private and group tours as usual in Bookeo. They simply have to tick the Virtual roster checkbox in the Schedule page of the group tours.

When virtual rostering is enabled, the boat is not allocated to a group tour until a booking is made for that specific tour.

So Lovin’ Fishing can schedule group tours A and B and private tour C to run on Monday at 10AM, even if they would all use the same boat.

As soon as a booking is received for one of the 3 tours, the boat is allocated to that tour, and the other 2 tours are automatically cancelled by Bookeo.

As soon as a booking is received for one of the 3 tours, the boat is allocated to that tour, and the other 2 tours are automatically cancelled by Bookeo.

For example, if a customer books group tour A for next Monday at 10AM, group tour B and private tour C would no longer be available at that time. Any other customer visiting Lovin’ Fishing's booking page would only see group tour A available for booking at 10AM next Monday - if there are enough seats left of course!

For more information on this new exciting feature, please see our tutorials:

Bookeo Appointments: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597797
Bookeo Classes & Courses: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597796
Bookeo Tours & Activities: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1597795

We hope this new feature will make Bookeo even more flexible to meet the needs of many of you!

Thank you to you all for your continued feedback to help us improve Bookeo even further.

Bookeo now supports 32 languages

We are pleased to announce that Bookeo customer interface is now available in 3 new languages:

• Brazilian Portuguese
• Bulgarian
• Korean 

You can let your customers select one of these languages - or others - in Settings>Regional Settings.

Default language and language selection

With Bookeo, you can set a default language for your booking page.

In Settings>Regional Settings, you can select the default language for your booking page from the "Your customers' language" scroll down menu.

If you tick the checkbox "Allow customers to change language", you can also let customers select other languages.

Embed Bookeo booking widget in a specific language

If you have multiple versions of your website, each in a specific language, for example in English, Korean, and Japanese, you can embed the Bookeo widget in Korean in your website in Korean, and in Japanese in your website in Japanese. For more information, please see our tutorial at http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/457569

We have plans to translate Bookeo into even more languages, so watch this space for further news!

New feature: Booking search function for admin interface

We have recently rolled out a significant new feature that you won’t be able to miss. Bookeo now offers a search feature for the admin interface, very similar to the search function offered in your booking page. Scheduling or rescheduling a booking will now be more user-friendly, quick and error-proof, even if your booking uses multiple resources.

When you create a new booking in your Bookeo calendar, or when you open an existing booking, you will see a new Find button.

When you click on the find button, a pop up window will open to show available timeslots.

Search function for services, personal lessons and personal tours

Search function for workshops, classes and tours

You can search for a slot in upcoming days, weeks or months, and click to select a slot and assign it to the booking. You can then complete the booking process as usual!

That’s all for now. Please do let us know your thoughts!