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 for Bookeo Appointments, Bookeo Classes & Courses and Bookeo Tours & Activities.

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.