Special Days and Paid Experiences

Special days let you replace the normal weekly reservation service for one venue-local date. Use them for bank holidays, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, ticketed dinners, or any date that should not follow the usual pattern.

A special day is an override, not a new reservation system. Normal bookings, large groups, rooms, private hire, table allocation, pacing, payments, waitlist, and reporting continue to use the same rules and records.

How date precedence works

For each date, TablePort uses this order:

If an exact special day exists, it replaces the weekly reservation shifts.
A Closed special day offers no reservation slots and rejects new notify and waitlist joins.
An open special day uses only its configured reservation hours.
If the special day selects offerings, only those offerings and their compatible spaces and tables can be booked.
If no special day exists, normal weekly shifts apply.

An evening service that crosses midnight remains attached to the date on which it opened. For example, a Valentine’s service ending at 1am is not cut short by a closed 15 February override.

Existing bookings are never deleted when you add or change an override. Staff can still see them and should contact affected guests if the venue’s plans change.

Close a bank holiday

Open Settings → Location settings → Reservations → Shifts.
Under Special days, choose Add special day.
Enter a clear name and the exact date.
Turn on Closed for reservations.
Save and verify that the intended date offers no eligible guest reservation slots.

This closes reservations and the waitlist for that date. It does not change the place’s public opening-hours display or cancel existing reservations.

Configure custom service for one date

Create an open special day, then either copy that weekday’s regular hours or add new hours. The final time is a last-arrival choice, not the end of service. Review adjacent shift boundaries and the resulting booking finish time.

Select one or more offerings when the date has a restricted proposition—for example, only Valentine’s Experience. Leave the offering list clear when all active guest offerings should remain available.

For a seasonal or one-night proposition, set the offering's guest availability to Only on selected special dates. It will stay hidden during normal service and becomes bookable only when an open special day selects it. Regular offerings can remain available on special days too: select the exact mix for that date, or leave the list clear to allow every active regular offering. Special-date-only offerings are never implied by an empty selection. This prevents a Valentine's package accidentally appearing on another holiday—or year-round—without requiring a second booking flow.

Rooms and private hires continue to share the same physical inventory. A room can be booked on the special date only when it accepts an offering enabled for that date. Exclusive and whole-venue bookings still hold their full configured footprint, preventing overlapping regular reservations.

Create a required paid experience

Paid experiences are configured on an offering. Set:

guest-facing description;
fixed price per booking or price per guest;
optional maximum price;
refund cutoff, or leave it non-refundable;
whether the payment becomes credit on the final bill or remains a separate experience fee;
menu items included when the party is seated; and
an optional existing fixed or percentage promotion to apply to the order.

The experience is required whenever its offering is booked. TablePort shows the terms before search, on the booking form, in payment, and on confirmation. Any normal booking deposit is collected in the same checkout. Inspect the displayed experience fee and deposit/credit portions separately. After a saved booking and seating handoff, verify the existing order and bill before adding another credit or included item.

Valentine’s example

Configure an offering called Valentine’s Experience:

fixed experience price: £40 per booking;
payment treatment: Separate experience fee;
refund cutoff: 48 hours;
included item: Champagne glass, quantity 2; and
linked promotion: Valentine dining, configured for the intended percentage and eligible food or drink items.

Then create the Valentine’s special day, set the evening hours, and enable only that offering. A party of two must pay the £40 experience fee to complete the reservation. When the host seats them, two champagne lines are added to the table order once at zero price because the experience fee already paid for them. The linked promotion is attached separately, and eligible food or drink lines receive it as the order grows. After reopening or resyncing, inspect the existing included lines and promotion before adding anything manually; an uncertain handoff needs review rather than a duplicate benefit.

What is preserved on the booking

At confirmation, TablePort snapshots the commercial promise: offering name, description, price method, calculated price, refund terms, included item names, quantities and prices, payment treatment, and linked promotion. Later catalogue, promotion, or settings edits do not rewrite that guest’s purchase.

If a guest change would alter the required payment terms—for example adding a paid experience or increasing a per-person experience from two to four guests— TablePort blocks the silent change. This applies even when the original booking was free, because the revised booking would need a new checkout. A manager must rebook or handle the financial adjustment explicitly. The original booking is left unchanged when the modification is rejected.

Seating and order handoff

When a linked booking is seated:

included items move to the POS order and are marked as experience items;
verify the existing transferred lines before retrying an uncertain handoff;
the linked promotion is refreshed as eligible items are added to the order;
order-credit experiences reduce the final bill through the reservation credit; and
separate-fee experiences remain outside that credit and transfer their promised included items at zero price, preventing a second charge.

If an included catalogue item was later retired, its booking snapshot still provides the promised name and price on the order.

Reporting

The dashboard shows paid-experience bookings alongside reservation and waitlist performance. Daily reports and manager emails include experience reservations, covers, booked value, and a breakdown by experience. Booked value is the value promised on reservations for that service date; use payment and accounting reports for recognized revenue, refunds, and settlement.

Before publishing

Use an agreed safe test process for the enabled guest and operator journey:

the date appears or disappears as expected;
only intended offerings and spaces are visible;
first and last slots match the special hours;
the correct amount and refund wording appear before payment;
booking confirmation lists included items;
changing party size cannot silently change a paid amount;
seating adds each promised item once;
the promotion discounts the intended order lines; and
the daily report and manager email show the experience.

For standard service rules, see Shifts, Pacing & Turn Times. For payment behavior, see Deposits, Cancellations & Changes.

Apply hours to several dates

Use Set hours for dates / Edit hours where offered. Choose From/Until and matching weekdays, add valid non-overlapping hours, and review the affected-date summary. Replace existing special days can reopen closed dates in that selection. Review removal of breaks and cleared last-order times/messages before applying. Apply to … dates changes the draft; Save changes on the page is still required to go live.

Inspect existing bookings and intended public opening-hours information separately. After an uncertain save or experience payment/handoff, reopen the same records and check their current state before retrying. Keep booking and financial references within authorised access.

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