A guest books, pays, gets a reminder, races and receives their results. Behind that quiet sequence is one engine for automated booking reminders, confirmations and receipts, with your branding and consent rules applied to every message.
Automated booking reminders that arrive at the right time
A guest books on Tuesday for Saturday. If nothing else happens, some of them forget, some arrive at the wrong door and some phone to ask what they booked. Automated booking reminders help with that, but only if they look like they come from you and arrive when you want.
VenueChief sends the messages about a guest’s booking, order, results and membership through one engine of templates and triggers. Promotions, support conversations, phone calls and staff alerts run in their own lanes beside it.
What is new: one engine, many moments
Messages fire from business events, such as a booking being created, a reminder falling due, a booking canceled, an order completed or refunded, a gift card purchased, a membership activated or a session completed. Venues using door access (early access) get a door code message too. Each event has a template you can edit with a preview and a test send, and each trigger can be switched on or off. There is a button to restore ready-made email templates and text templates if you want to start over.
- Your branding. Booking confirmation emails use your colors, logo and fonts, with a plain-text version and your postal address on every message.
- Your timing. Reminders follow your check-in policy: whether they send and how many minutes before the booking. The starting setting is 60 minutes.
- Your provider, or ours. By default the platform sends for you, within your plan’s allowances. You can connect your own SendGrid, Twilio or SMTP account instead, and the plan limit stops applying.
- Test sends. Every template has a preview and a test send, so you can see exactly what a guest receives before you rely on it.
Book a demo and we will walk through a booking, start to finish, from the guest’s inbox.
Consent, handled as a feature
Every message belongs to one of seven categories: critical, transactional, bookings, contests, results, marketing and gamification. Email is on by default for everything except marketing. SMS reminders and WhatsApp messages are never sent unless the guest has a recorded opt-in. Voice calls follow the text record, and marketing calls are refused outright.
Guests manage their choices on a preferences page, and they can opt out from a link in an email without signing in. Critical and high-priority messages are never blocked by a plan’s monthly limit.
Promotions and conversations stay in their own lanes
Promotional email runs through campaigns with their own allowance and checks, so a big send cannot starve your booking confirmations. With the shared inbox add-on, a guest who emails or texts you lands in your shared inbox, where your team can answer. If the Campaigns add-on lapses, booking confirmations still go out.
What guests receive, and when
A guest books, and a confirmation arrives in your colors with your address. A reminder follows at the time your check-in policy sets. If they cancel or you refund an order, the matching message goes out as it happens. A guest who buys a gift card gets a purchase confirmation, and a new member gets an activation message. A completed session is a trigger too. Each of those is a trigger you can see, preview and test, and each respects the guest’s consent. That is what automated booking reminders look like when they are part of the platform instead of a separate tool.
Who it suits
Every venue that takes bookings. Karting tracks and sim racing centers confirming a booking, golf lounges confirming a bay, escape rooms confirming a group, and entertainment centers sending a party confirmation to the host.
Setting it up
Open Communications, then Messages, to find the Templates and Triggers tabs. Use the preview and the test send to see exactly what a guest will receive, switch off the triggers you do not want and connect your own provider if you prefer. Allowances for transactional messages and marketing are tracked in separate buckets, so a big promotion cannot use up the allowance your confirmations depend on.
What it changes on a busy day
- Guests know where to go and when, without a phone call.
- Your emails carry your colors, logo and address.
- A guest who texts STOP stops getting non-critical texts, and a guest who unsubscribes from email stops getting marketing email.
Availability and fine print
The messaging engine is included in every plan. Campaigns, the shared inbox and voice are separate add-ons. See pricing.
Sending texts to guests in the United States at volume requires carrier registration. The software does not do this for you.