Manual capacity
A reservation uses up part of a start time’s allotment — like tickets. You set a number, and each start time can take that many guests. A party of four takes four of the 2:00 allotment. When 2:00’s number is used up, 2:00 stops being offered — but 2:30 still has its own full allotment. The part that surprises people: the allotment doesn’t carry across start times, even when visits overlap. Sixty-minute visits starting every 30 minutes sell independently at 8:00 and 8:30 — the 8:00 guests don’t consume 8:30’s number, and the venue’s floor map isn’t consulted at all. That’s the point of this strategy: it’s for experiences whose capacity is a stated number per departure, not a shared set of physical seats. Use it for: tours, classes, ticketed dinners and events — anywhere each start time is its own sitting with its own count. If overlapping visits share the same physical seats — a tasting bar where a party stays 60 minutes and new parties arrive every 30 — that’s the Venue floor map strategy’s job, or space this strategy’s start times at least a full visit apart.Venue floor map
A reservation uses up real tables or seats, for the length of the visit. There’s no per-slot number. Your tables are the capacity. A party is offered a time only if a table (or a combinable pair) can actually seat them, accounting for every other reservation overlapping that window — across all experiences in that venue, not just this one. When you’d rather an experience have capacity of its own, see One venue or two?. Communal tables work differently and correctly: a shared bar or farm table gives up seats rather than being taken whole, so three parties can share it until its seats run out. (A communal table is never combined with another table.) Use it for: restaurant service, anywhere a party occupies a specific table for a duration.Good to know Per-table availability is the one that most depends on your floor being accurate. If a party of six is being told there’s nothing available at a time you know is quiet, check that a table with max covers of 6 exists, or that two four-tops are marked combinable with each other.
Whole venue — a buyout
A reservation uses up the entire room. The venue must be completely empty for the whole booking window. Once someone books it, every other time overlapping that window disappears from every experience in that venue. Use it for: private events, corporate buyouts, wedding receptions.Buyouts are priced flat
This is the important bit and the one that catches people out. A whole-venue price is one price for the room. It does not multiply by party size. A 1,500 whether eight people or forty come. Your admin, the register’s Book reservation tile, your store’s Experiences list and the booking window all show a buyout’s price as “$1,500 for the venue”, never “per guest”. The consequence is simple and worth telling your staff: changing the party size on a buyout moves no money. Adding four guests doesn’t create a balance; removing four doesn’t earn a refund. The edit screen’s summary says so before you save:A buyout is one price for the whole venue — changing the party size doesn’t change what’s owed.Change it with Adjust party size from Host or the iPad and Riserva says the same once it’s saved: “Party size updated. A buyout is one price for the whole venue, so nothing owed changed.” If a bigger party genuinely costs you more, charge for that with an add-on, or set up a separate buyout experience priced for the larger group — don’t expect the party size to do it.
Good to know A buyout with seatings every 30 minutes reads like a tasting bar to guests. Set the slot interval so a buyout offers one or two sensible start times, not eleven.
Open (no limit)
A reservation uses up nothing in particular — only pacing, and an optional per-slot cap. Use it for: a walk-in-friendly patio, a self-guided experience, anything where the only real limit is how fast your team can absorb arrivals. If you give it a per-slot capacity it behaves like Manual capacity. If you don’t, it’s limited by arrival pacing alone.The limits that apply to every strategy
Whatever strategy you choose, Riserva checks all of these before offering a time:
Arrival pacing is set on the venue, not the experience, and it counts every
experience running there. That’s deliberate: your kitchen doesn’t care which
menu the eight people arriving at 12:30 chose.
Staff bypass the cutoff and the members-only gate. A guest who calls at
2:50 for a 3:00 tasting can be booked by your team even though the website has
closed that time.
Changing a strategy later
You can, from the editor — each choice shows a one-line description under the selector and a blue box explaining how that model behaves, so you can judge the switch before saving. Fields that don’t apply to the chosen strategy (like Max per slot under Venue floor map) hide themselves. Existing reservations keep the strategy they were booked under, so money and capacity already settled don’t shift under you. New availability uses the new one.What things mean on this screen: What things mean: Experiences