Everything about an online reservation system
As a business owner, you often find yourself short on time because you are mainly occupied with peripheral tasks such as creating and modifying reservations. One way to make things easier for both your customers and yourself is to set up an online reservation system. This allows customers to quickly and easily make appointments and reservations without being dependent on opening hours. In this article, we discuss the benefits of an online reservation system for both businesses and customers.
What is an online reservation system?
An online reservation system is booking software that allows businesses to manage and accept reservations from customers. It can be used for any type of business that takes reservations, such as boat hire, sports clubs, courses, meeting rooms, and so on. Customers are able to make appointments or reservations via the business's website, 24 hours a day, without ever having to call during office hours. After a reservation is made, the i-Reserve reservation system will automatically send confirmation emails to both the customer and the business.
Benefits of an online reservation system for both businesses and users
An online reservation system offers many advantages for both you and your customers. The first benefit is that you no longer need to spend time answering phone calls or email enquiries about reservations. This allows your staff to focus on more important tasks. i-Reserve also always provides an up-to-date overview of all online reservations made through the system, helping you keep track of all bookings. In addition, you can decide for yourself which information (e.g. reservations, statistics) you would like to see in the i-Reserve reports.
For customers, a major advantage is that they can make reservations at any time of the day or night without having to worry about opening hours. They also have immediate insight into all available options and availability.
The reservation system for (sports) businesses, leisure, hire, and courses
The i-Reserve online reservation system is a booking system for, amongst other things, (meeting) rooms, sports, and courses. But i-Reserve also makes it easy to schedule appointments or plan experiences and events.
Reservation system for leisure
i-Reserve is the perfect solution for businesses in the leisure industry. With our online reservation system for leisure, customers can easily book activities, from bowling alleys to escape rooms. Scheduling appointments and planning sporting activities is also a breeze with our reservation system.
Reservation system for (sports) businesses
Your business most likely organises sports classes that people can take part in. To do so, they first need to book a time slot. This involves a great deal of work and often leads to double bookings or other errors that cost the organisation extra money and resources. With i-Reserve's reservation system for sport, you can prevent this and save valuable time!
You can use specific rules to determine when visitors are permitted to make a reservation. These rules ensure that sufficient capacity is always available throughout the year for everyone who wishes to take part in an activity at a given time, without you needing to log in to the system every day. You can also block periods for, for example, training sessions.
Reservation system for hire
Do you run a hire business? i-Reserve is also the ideal booking system for hire companies. From boat hire to electric scooters — it is all possible. Automate as much of the reservation process as possible so that you have time left over for more enjoyable matters. For instance, you can automatically send booking confirmations and invoices in your own corporate identity after a booking is made.
Customers can easily find and book your offerings on a website. This saves you time and money, as customers no longer need to call during office hours. You can then keep track of reservations, customers, and payments within the reservation system.
Reservation system for courses
Thanks to the flexible nature of i-Reserve, the reservation system is also highly suitable for booking courses. You manage the courses, schedule trainers, and send invoices all from one system, in your own corporate identity.
You also give your customers a real-time overview of available courses at any time and offer them the ability to book, pay, and manage their enrolments directly online. Is a course fully booked? Let customers sign up for a waiting list. Read more here about the possibilities of i-Reserve for courses.
How an online reservation system can help improve customer service
An important benefit of an online reservation system is that it can improve customer service. As we have mentioned several times, customers can book appointments and activities online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which can save them time. This improved convenience is likely to result in more returning customers. Finally, online reservation systems make it easy for businesses to automatically notify their customers of any changes or updates to their appointments. All these factors together contribute to a better overall customer experience and strengthen the relationship between business and customer.
From how many reservations does a reservation system pay for itself?
The i-Reserve reservation system is available from €39 per month. A Silver licence with the Online Booking module costs just €68.95 excl. VAT per month. This is a fixed monthly amount. You therefore do not pay per reservation made. From how many reservations per month do you recoup this cost?
Assumptions:
A colleague who handles reservations has a minimum net hourly wage of €10.00 per hour. Taking and processing a reservation by phone takes an average of 15 minutes.
If you process 28 reservations in one month, that amounts to approximately 28 × 0.25 hours (15 min) = 7.5 hours. 7.5 hours multiplied by €10.00 costs the business €70.00 per month. A reservation system therefore pays for itself with just 28 reservations — that is 7 reservations per week.
How do you add an online reservation system to your website?
Adding an online reservation system to your website may sound complicated, but it certainly is not. When you choose to use the i-Reserve reservation system, we create a domain for you and configure the system on your behalf. We link it to your website via a 'book now' button. The domain is styled to match your website, so customers do not notice they are on a different site. It is also possible to use an API to connect your website to the reservation system. View our references to see how customers have implemented this on their own websites.
Integrations with a reservation system
There are various ways to integrate a reservation system with other software. We have native integrations with various payment providers, and you can use import/export integrations to connect your i-Reserve environment with your accounting system. It is also possible to integrate with office tools and calendars. Native integrations are also available for leisure and recreation. Want to go a step further? You can fully automate everything by linking access control to your reservation system.
i-Reserve: the online reservation system
If you would like to find out more about how our online reservation system can help your business, please contact us today! We are happy to help. Turn website visitors into customers straight away with the i-Reserve online reservation system.