I have a client that is a restaurant, and we are just finishing putting together their new website. Just as the site was about to go live, they’ve come back to us and told us, that instead of having a simple ‘booking form’ on the site, they’d like to have a full-blown restaurant booking system, online. Something that will automatically manage bookings behind the scenes, without requiring staff intervention.
Do you have knowledge of any restaurant booking system that could be integrated with a website? I’m guessing that there is either going to be an open source php script somewhere, or that there is going to be a cloud-based booking service that I might be able to easily integrate on the site.
Any recommendations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! I’m desperate!..
Integrate an online restaurant reservation system into your website with a few easy steps. Restaurant booking system is a convenient self-serviced table booking system that can be embedded into any website. With this restaurant reservation system you can create a customized booking process and let people book a table online, manage restaurant availability and reservations. The script provides all must-have features to improve conversion rate and optimize the restaurant table booking process.
What does full-blown mean? Something that will reserve tables at certain hours after a submission? Or something that restaurant goers can log into to modify their reservations?
You could build something within Kirby that could pass form data and edit reservation data, which was only visible to someone who was logged in. This could be a page in kirby’s content or a JSON object stored somewhere. You could even create a cute map of the restaurant - perhaps move a slider from 5:00pm to 12:00am and it will highlight booked tables, or click on a table to see what times are booked… Pitch it and bill them!
@SQBiz the restaurant currently does not have an electronic booking system - their booking is all done ‘old-school’, with pen and paper. They want to move onto a digital system, which will integrate directly with their website, so that website visitors can book online directly, without having to call, and without needing staff intervention. This means that the system needs to handle online bookings, phone bookings and ‘walk-ins’. The system also needs to do things such as work out table availability for parties of different sizes, and estimate when a table will be available again - allowing for multiple sittings in one shift. It must be multi-user savvy - different staff members need to be able to use at the same time - and must be able to work well on an iPad, which is probably what the hostess/concierge will have in hand as they welcome guests. The system needs to be able to send SMS and email reminders, and it is essential that guest/booking lists can be exported, so they can be used in email marketing campaigns (integration with MailChimp would be a bonus).
@jakobploen thank you for the tip about phpjabbers. I had a really good look at their script, and it does look interesting. Its main advantage is that it is much cheaper than all the other solutions I’ve come across. Its main disadvantage is that it is quite underpowered - it has no built-in reporting functions, no performance tracking, no client info and marketing data, and the interface is not as well-developed as the alternatives. Also, it requires the booking script to run in a sub-directory of the site’s domain. I don’t know how well that would work with Kirby, considering that Kirby takes over routing for all requests within its domain. I’m guessing it could possibly be worked out with custom routes, etc, but it may be a chore.
I would LOVE to find a booking script that I could instal on my own server - that would indeed be the ideal solution - so if you know of any others, please do let me know.
In the meantime, I have found a couple of cloud-hosted alternatives, which like MailChimp, can be integrated into an existing website via a customizable widget:
You could build something within Kirby that could pass form data and
edit reservation data, which was only visible to someone who was logged
in. This could be a page in kirby’s content or a JSON object stored
somewhere. You could even create a cute map of the restaurant
with a few simple tricks you can fullcalendar.js you could basically code a booking calendar… that’s what i have been doing…
but it really depends on the needs. e.g. booking systems like open table are much more refined providing selection for table seating and realtime updates, but i have seen their pricing, which is quite something in it’s own league…
