Creating a Special Day for Availability Planning

Create Special Days to offer unique options for high-traffic days alongside your regular scheduled reservations, such as a Mother’s Day brunch or an anniversary celebration.

To create a Special Day, follow these steps:

1. Create an Experience
2. Create Availability with a Special Day: 
   • Add a Special Day 
   • Set up or change your floor plan
   • Set up or change Table Availability
   • Set Pacing and Turn Times
   • Optimize Table Availability
   • Set up Table Prioritization
   • Publish your Special Day 

Create an Experience

1. Open the Control Panel and click Experiences.
2. Click Add experience.
3. Select the type of reservation:
   • Prepaid: a reservation to be paid for in full for an all-inclusive experience
   • Deposit: a reservation requiring an upfront deposit
   • Reservation: a standard free reservation requiring no deposit
4. Enter a name, a description, tags, and a campaign tag, and depending on the reservation type, enter price, taxes, and service charge options.
5. Click Create experience.

After creating the experience, edit General information and make additional changes as needed.

For set menus, you can either include a description of the menu in the Description field, or add selections within the Add-ons tab or Menus tab. If you want different pricing tiers (e.g., adult vs. child price), set the Pricing tab to $0 and set pricing in the Add-ons tab or Menus tab.

Create Availability with a Special Day

After your Experience is created, add Availability with a Special Day. 

Add a Special Day

1. Open the Control Panel and click Availability Planning.
2. Click Add special day.
3. Enter a name and select a date for the Special Day.
4. Select Use published schedule to use the existing schedule on the date of your Special Day as a template, or select Create new special day to create a floor plan and Availability from scratch.

Set up or change your Floor Plan

After setting up your schedule details, click Continue to floor plan.

Set up or make changes to your Floor Plan:

• To add a new room, click New room.
• To add tables, click +.
• To delete tables, select a table and click Delete tables.
• To add table combinations, click the table icon.
• To reorganize tables, click and drag tables to their new place on the floor.

Set up or change Table Availability

After making changes to the Floor Plan, click Continue to services. To add a new service, click +, or click the original service to make changes for the Special Day.

1. Select the service type you want to offer, such as All Day or Brunch. 
2. Add or edit the start and end time. Start time is when you start accepting reservations. End time is when the last reservation begins.
3. If adding a new service, select an experience to apply to tables within this service. You can refine Table Availability after adding your service. Then click Add Service. 
4. Click on the pencil icon next to Table availability, then select the tables you want to make available for the Special Day.
   • Click individual tables or check Select all in the top-left corner.
   • Click Edit selected tables in the top-right corner.
   • Click Apply experience to selected tables and select your Special Day experience.
   • Repeat if you are using multiple experiences for different tables.
5. You can also block tables from being available. After selecting the tables you want to block, click Edit selected tables, then click Block selected tables for service.
6. After making edits, click Done editing, then click Save.

Set Pacing and Turn Times

After setting up your Table Availability, set Pacing and Turn Times:

• To set pacing limits, click the pencil icon next to Pacing.
• To set turn times by party size, click the pencil next to Turn times.

Optimize Table Availability

The Optimize Table Availability feature allows you to automatically release availability for blocked or in-house tables a set amount of time prior to the start of service. See this article for setup steps.

Set up Table Prioritization

Table Prioritization allows you to have more control over where your reservations are assigned. You can prioritize specific tables, table combinations, or sections within your floor plan to best respond to your business’ needs. See this article for setup steps.

Publish your Special Day

After you’ve configured settings for your Special Day, you can get ready to publish:

1. Click Continue to review and ensure all your settings are correct. Make any necessary changes.
2. Click Publish Special Day.
3. To ensure your Availability is bookable online, click Availability in the Control Panel and review your Release settings.

Once your Special Day is published and availability released, guests will be able to book on your public business page.

To view your Special Day, navigate to your business page on ExploreTock. When you’re ready to take reservations, start promoting to your customers:

• Send your guests an email notifying them of your special offerings.
• Post about your Special Day experience on social media and tag @exploretock.