Automatic confirmation issue

In the use case I provided, the behaviour is exactly the same as how it was before this update. The ‘Automatically Confirm Below Party Size’ always overruled all other auto confirm settings.

you can say I want to stop automatically confirming at 10 people, unless the reservation is for 1 or 2 people

This doesn’t make sense. If you have a capacity of 10, then that’s the point you want to stop auto confirming all together. There are simply no more seats/tables available, not even for 1 or 2 people.

In a restaurant you work the other way around.
– You want to stop auto confirming completely if you almost reached your capacity.
– You do want to auto confirm reservations for 4 people or less, because that’s the number of seats at a table.
– You do not want to auto confirm for larger party sizes, because that will involve moving seats/tables around, so you need to see if that’s possible.

I know this is partially about a premium feature and I have created a premium ticket for this issue in the past. That ended in a very unpleasant and unprofessional support experience up to the point that I asked for a refund. After I saw in the release notes there was a change around auto confirmation I gave it a try again and found that nothing has been changed. I decided to create a ticket here because I am 99% sure you are not the same person as the person from premium support.

I don’t want it the old way. That worked exactly the same way as I described and how it works now. Nothing has been changed for the example I gave.

Call me stubborn, but I honestly don’t understand that decision. This is only about the automatic confirmation. Bookings can still be made when it reaches the limit, they only need to be manually confirmed.

Did you get input from restaurant owners about that logic? I come from a hospitality background and I only work with restaurants. They don’t want to risk automatically getting overbooked in any way. They want to automatically confirm UNTIL ANY of the capacity restrictions is reached. They still might be able to fit in a table of two somewhere, but they want to check, be in control and manually confirm if it fits in.

With maximum capacities, there is no ‘always’ fits in. The may be able to fit the first one, but what about the next one, or the next one, or etc.

We deal with a maximum quantity for seats and tables (called reservations in premium). If either one of them is booked out, you have to stop selling. Both are equally important. You can’t simply leave one of them out because it increases the risk of getting over booked, either by seats or by tables/reservations.

Example for a restaurant with:
– 12 tables with 4 seats each (ie auto confirm below 12 reservations)
– 48 seats in total (ie auto confirm below 48 seats)

» When you reached 12 reservations for two, auto confirm needs to stop. Although you have 24 free seats, there are no more reservations/tables left
» If you get 4 reservations for 12, auto confirm needs to stop. Although you have 8 tables/reservations left, there are no more seats.

It’s nice that you are willing to implement a filter for users who want to change the behaviour, but I think that’s overly complex.

In my opinion, it makes more sense to change the behaviour and stop auto confirmation when the capacity of either one of the 3 settings (in free AND premium together) is reached.

That way, if there are users who never want to stop auto confirmations, all they have to do is increase the limits to a higher value then they really have. That way both options are possible without technical stuff.

Thanks
JP