How to Block Phone Reservations

Need to restrict reservations? Have a buy-out or full commitment? This guide will walk you through how to do so.

Introduction

The OpenTable Availability settings allow you to control both Online as well as In-house availability for your dining inventory. The Slang + OpenTable integration books In-house availability, so anytime you are looking to restrict phone bookings through Slang, you'll need to un-check this box:

Blocking Reservations

1. On your tablet, go to Availability Planning.
2. Click on "Special Days" on the top navigation bar - this will show you what already exists and allow you to set up new ones.
3. Click on "Add" in the top right and select a calendar date, or open a Special Day that already exists.
4. Once you're in the calendar date, you can name that day for reference, then select an existing shift to customize, or add a new shift.
5. To customize a standard shift for the Special Day, click on that shift name in the center and then click on "Customize" on the right. Then open "Shift Settings."
6. Decision point: Do you want to close the whole shift or a partial shift?
   1. If you want to split a shift into time blocks, for example: you have a buyout from 4pm - 10pm and you need to be able to set up starting at 3:
      1. Flow settings won't apply here, so you'll likely want to set a time boundary that starts at 2pm so that nobody can book a table starting at 2pm, ensuring that you can get active diners out by 3pm.
      2. If the dining room can accept a late seating, you can split the shift into early/mid/late so that callers can book after your buy-out is over.
      3. If you have patio (or other) seating that might not be used by the party, but you don't want callers to book, you can set the area to "Walk-in Only" so your staff can seat at their discretion.
      4. Make the blocked time "Unavailable" or "Walk-in Only" to protect it from booking online or via the phone.
   2. If the whole shift is bought-out, make everything Unavailable (no peak times needed) or Walk-in Only.
   3. Save, Save, Publish!

In this partial shift buy-out example above, if you call and try to book for 3pm, callers will hear "unfortunately, we don't have anything at 3pm, but we have other times available, what works for you: 1:30 or 1:45?"

We will search 3 hours ahead and behind the requested time to try to book on the date the diner asked for initially. 2pm is the start of the "Unavailable" time period so you can clear the restaurant for your buy-out!

Have Questions?

Need more assistance or have a question? Shoot us an email at support@slang.ai. Our dedicated support team is available to help with any questions you might have, so don't hesitate to reach out!