How Online Booking Will Transform Your Events

At Tripleseat, we’re always thinking of next steps — how we can keep improving our software to make the event planning process easier for both venues and their clients. With that in mind, we wanted to share an overview of our online booking functionality.

What is online booking?

Online booking is a customizable feature that Tripleseat offers through our lead form feature, which any venue can add to their website, social media, or email marketing to drive event inquiries. It’s an easy way for a guest to visit a venue’s website and book an event online by instantly securing the space. The process is simple: A guest can access the online booking form, supply basic information about their event (such as headcount, date, and time), and see what the venue has available.

They’re able to walk through and put together their event from the space to the menu, secure the reservation with a credit card, and have it submitted as a confirmed event directly on the venue’s calendar for that location. Then, the venue can follow up to confirm details and finalize any loose ends.

Online booking secures business faster

At Tripleseat, we work hard to lead innovation in the event management software space. We noticed there was no way to book an event immediately, which can lead to lost business opportunities. Tripleseat already makes the booking process easy, but we also wanted to help guests streamline their event needs.

Streamline can mean different things to different venues. It could be putting a start-to-finish experience on your website for a customer to book because space is limited in headcount and cannot fully support curated event consulting. It could also simply be configured as a way to receive highly qualified leads for more matrixed corporate client partners. Either way, the end goal is the same: to help our clients secure more business, faster.

Online booking allows you to sell more than events

Our recently launched TripleseatDirect feature gives your business a streamlined way to generate business for your venue’s revenue streams. In our ever-changing environment, it’s never been more valuable to expand your events business outside the four walls of your venue, and TripleseatDirect will help you make that happen.

You can add TripleseatDirect to your website and share it in your digital marketing just like our original lead form. TripleseatDirect also allows you to customize for booking any off-site catering, in-house private events, takeout, or delivery.

Why online booking is exciting for your guests

Being able to offer online booking is exciting for many reasons. But mostly, this allows our clients to provide a focused approach that customers want. Over the years, we’ve heard from venues and event clients that the most resounding pain point was a lack of transparency in the booking of the event. It often involved having to call or email too many places or people, resulting in a massive loss of time.

Online booking allows the guest to go through, see what’s available, determine what works for them, and move forward with their event. With TripleseatDirect, you can customize options and put the booking process in the hands of your customers, allowing them to choose what they want and easily pay online. And that will save you a ton of time!

How online booking can transform your events program

It all depends on how the client uses it— but online booking will get you more business, faster, and with less work. We have clients with limited headcount or space and no dedicated event staff. They have created a very detailed online booking experience for their guests so they can be self-sufficient. For more complex organizations, we’ve seen them use online booking to put their most frequently booked events online, freeing up their event team to source higher revenue event business.

Sometimes clients can be reluctant to adopt the new technology or process. But there’s good news! It’s amazing how quickly our venues become fans. They wake up, go to work and see they have an event for a random Wednesday at 5 p.m. totaling $3,000. Boom!

Interested? Let us help

While change and new technology can be intimidating, Tripleseat has seen huge success with our customers who use online booking. We consider this a strategic next step for our platform. Interested in giving it a shot at your venue? Schedule a free demo online.