Common use cases include soft play centers where you'd have the likes of "Toddler", "Child", and "Adult".

💭 If you don't plan to charge your customers with BookingNinja then you will not need to use Guest types; custom fields can collect all the information you need!

Step 1: Creating Guest Types

Navigate to your settings page and click 'Guest Types' - tap the 'Create New Guest Type' button.

You've now got several options you can configure for this guest type.

Minimums and Maximums

Now you can set your minimum and maximum of this guest type. Other limits may impact this, but because at times you are asking for guest type before knowing the session we need to specify limits here. Setting a minimum of more than 0 will mean that the booking can not proceed unless this guest type has been selected.

ℹ️ Why Maximum is Required

15 minutes after the guest has put their details in but before they have confirmed/paid, that space is effectively 'booked', so having no max or a very high high a maximum means you can have unconfirmed bookings taking up your space.

Factored in Guest Counts

This setting determines if this guest counts when looking at total venue limits; if unfactored and your venue has a 20 covers maximum, then any covers of this type won't factor into that maximum. Common use cases for this to to not include adults in the totals for soft play centers, or even to allow people to add a doggy 🐶 as a guest type!

🚨 Factored is Independent from Yield

If your venue uses yield (that is places guests automatically onto tables that fit their group size) then it's important to consider factored or not only reflects the numeric limits of your venue (max covers per slot, max covers etc) and not their table usage. A group of 5 that has 2 unfactored guests will still need a 5 person table.

Sub Type of Another Type

Sub Type is used in cases where you have the 'same' type of guest but you operate differently depending on quantity of those guests. For example you may wish to offer 2 'Free Adult' guest type spaces, but after those 2 free adults have hit their maximum then offer 'Additional Adult' at an extra cost.

To use Sub Type of another type you'll need to ensure you have at least one additional guest type - select the guest type you want only to show when the guest type your currently editing is full (at it's maximum limit as specified above).

Other Guest Types Required

This is used in cases where you might offer babies free entry but only when joining another paying child; or cases where you don't want a carer without someone on a disability discounted ticketed.

Other Guest Type Limits Increased

This option allows you to increase the maximum of another guest type; for every additional one of the currently edited guest type. You may offer 1 free child space for every paying adult for example; in which case you'll set this to Increases "Child" by "1 Guest"

ℹ️ Using guest type limits to keep your form clean

If you have a guest type that has a maximum of zero, this can be used to then display it after another type has be added. As guest types with a maximum of zero do not show, this means you can have a cleaner booking page, until people enter guest selections that allow them additional user choices.

Step 2: Adding Guest Types to Your Form

You'll now need to add your guest types to a deposit in order to have them appear on your form. On Bookingninja, every Guest Type has to be linked to a deposit, even if your guest types are free.

You can learn how to set up deposits with guest types on this guide.