Anything rented by the hour or the day — banquet halls, meeting rooms, recording and photo studios, padel and badminton courts, rehearsal rooms, function spaces at restaurants, community halls — is booked today by email and a shared calendar nobody trusts. A space booking system on the venue's own website replaces the thread with a form, a calendar and a deposit.
The problems
- "Is the hall free on the 14th?" answered after three emails.
- Provisional holds that quietly become double bookings.
- Pricing that depends on who answers the phone.
- Deposits chased by invoice; cancellations that cost the date.
What the booking system should do
- Spaces as resources with hourly, half-day and daily rates, peak/off-peak, minimum durations and setup/cleanup buffers.
- Live availability calendar per space on the site; instant booking for small rooms and courts, request-and-confirm for large events.
- Add-ons: catering, equipment, staffing, with prices.
- Deposits and balances through Stripe, with the cancellation policy applied automatically.
- Contracts and confirmations from your own address with the agreed terms.
- Operations view: what is booked today, setup times, who is responsible.
- Customer history and CSV export; repeat-hirer rates.
What changes
Small rooms and courts book themselves; large events arrive with a deposit and the right information; the calendar is finally one calendar; and the venue stops leaking dates to provisional holds.
What it costs
Our Booking Panel ($500) adds all of the above to the website you already have — booking form, inbox, confirmations, reminders, rules, calendar, export — in about a week, on your own hosting, with no monthly fee and no per-booking commission. Venues typically compare it with one lost weekend booking. If you later need staff calendars, deposits or a client portal, it grows into a full admin panel. Compare it with what a subscription costs you over a year in build vs subscribe, or ask for a free demo with your own branding.