Guest types is a feature you'll want if you have different charge types for different guests.
Common use cases include soft play centers where you'd have the likes of "Toddler", "Child", and "Adult". It's also often used in entertainment establishments and places which offer a discount to careers or pensioners.
💭 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.
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.
Guest Type Name
The guest type name is shown publicly on the page where they pick their guest type; so make sure this accurately describes the guest type in a way the customer will understand.
🚨 Avoid Confusing Naming:
Avoid using terms which are open to interpretation such as "Toddler," you'll find your definition and someone else definition can be vastly different, especially when they might be able to save a few coins! Also ensure your ages are clearly inclusive or not (don't have 1-2 years, 2-4 years etc!)
Display Order
The higher the number the higher it will appear on the guest type picker relative to the other guest types you have. You don't need to make sure it goes 1-10, so if you want adults to always be at the top feel free to this to 100.
Minimum and Maximum
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.
Global / Not Global
The global & not global setting determines if this guest type is shown by default on sessions where you have not configured guest type options.
If you normally don't need to know guest types but sometimes you do - then you can toggle all your guest types as not global. This means your regular bookings will continue as normal, but you can then go into a session and specify it to use guest types.
You can have any mixture of global and non-global guest types; so it's perfectly possible to operate your venue with normal 'guest types' and then have separate guest types for your special events (such as 🎃 halloweeeeen parties).
🚨 Don't Mix & Match Requirements & Scope
Though you can have an unlimited number of guest types; be very careful about setting your requirements (detailed below). You should not have a global session type that requires a local type, or indeed vice-versa.
Doing so can often lead to conditions where guests are unable to complete your requirements and in turn not be able to book; and from our experience, that makes them and you rather annoyed!
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).
🚨 You Can Chain Sub Types, But You Likely Should Not.
You can have a sub type that requires a sub type that requires a sub-type - and there are very rare but limited use cases for this - the majority of the time however it's a confusing thing for your guests and your team and we'd highly recommend not doing this unless expressly required.
Other Guest Types Required
If other guest types are selected here then the person booking must have at least one of the selected also selected before they can book. This works on a "or" basis, meaning they simply need ANY of the guest types selected.
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.