Wondering what people are using and what they have been able to do within the Vin65 platform.
I want to be able to fill a set of one hour time windows that have ten slots available, so for example five couples could independently reserve during the same window.
I had once considered Cellar Pass a long time ago, and went back today to see where it was at. In the Sierra Foothills section it was such a complete mess I really don’t even want to consider it. (But I guess I’ll keep an open mind.)
As with all wine-specific software (Vin65 excluded), the options out there aren’t very amazing.
VinoVisit can do what you’re talking about. You can set up different experience types and allocate slots that can be reserved against. The integration with Vin65 is limited to customer queries, customer creation and will drop each reservation into the customer’s record as an order.
It’s not the most elegant solution, but it’s better than CellarPass and has a ton of granular options.
Some wineries use OpenTable, but there isn’t really an API-driven integration.
We have been EXTREMELY satisfied with Rezdy … however, they just raised their pricing, and word on the street is that folks are jumping ship in light of it to FairHarbor - I’d checked them out about a year ago but they didn’t fit the bill. The rep reached out to me and said they’ve made a lot of changes, so I scheduled another demo. Our plan with Rezdy went from a reasonable $100/mo to $150 with the pricing increase. Sure it’s only $50 a month…but if you’re going to raise prices arbitrarily with no comparable service upgrades/improvements to match, I’m strongly motivated to check out the competition.
I will say that Rezdy was one of the few services that not only provided the flexibility needed for winery tours, but also a platform that worked extremely well. The touch point is the ability to manage “inventory”…so for example, in the terms that they lay it out in the software, they use a canoe company:
You have 5 canoes. You can allow people to book a canoe privately (say, 2 people book a canoe), and you can set it up such that the private canoe is no longer available for more bookings, even though it’s not “full”. Of course, the ticket cost for the private canoe is higher.
Now you’re down to 4 canoes. Say 2 more people want to book a canoe trip, but don’t mind if it’s a “group” trip. So they’ve booked 2/5 spots in a canoe, leaving the other 3 spots open for another customer to pick up/fill.
Translated into the winery, this allows us to set staff members as inventory (“canoe” in the example above). Each staff member can handle tour/tasting groups of up to 22 people (we figure that’s the “breaking point”, where they only need (1) bottle of each wine to pour for 22 people, instead of having to open a second bottle to be able to fill the glasses of say the 23, 24, 25th persons). So if a “group tour” time slot fills above 22 people, it requires another staff member to be available to handle the group size of 23+.
Here’s the beauty of the system: inventory can be “shared” across ticket types, such that both ticket types can be “available” for the same time slot, and the availability of the ticket is subject to inventory availability. So say you have a “group” tour ticket, with max 22 people per available inventory (staffer). Then you have a “private” ticket type, with minimum qty of 7, max qty of (name a number - lets say 22). And across both ticket types, you have a shared inventory of 2 staffers, set as available ahead of time on the calendar.
Remember, we’re looking at them like inventory, so it’s really simple. If someone books a “private” tour for 8, then the staff member devoted to them is removed from available inventory. Thus, the system will ONLY allow the second staffer to be booked for (1) more private tour, or (1) group tour (not to exceed the max capacity per staff of 22 people). However, if no “private” tour is booked, you then have the “group” tour timeframe automatically available for up to 44 people.
Rezdy isn’t the only company to offer inventory management for tour bookings. But a year ago, they seemed to be the only company that really pulled it off in a way that was completely invisible to the customer, while automating the “availability” for us, which meant there was absolutely no management required - we don’t have to go and “close” available slots because something was booked and that means we no longer have the staff for the other ticket type - it just takes care of itself once you set it up.
Again, I’m sure there are more out there that have come up to speed and offer the same (FairHarbor perhaps…we’ll see). Another company that we used was Xola, and we left because they didn’t offer the inventory/shared inventory features…they notified me since then that they’ve added that functionality, but I didn’t love the platform in that there were occasional issues with pages not refreshing properly during the checkout process, browser cookies goofing up cart contents (you know when you add something, then remove it, then add something else, but it still shows the original? that kind of annoying stuff). I’m sure they’ve probably ironed out those kinks by now, but meh…if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. The Rezdy price increase has me ready to shop around, but for the time being, at least I’m not in a rush.
Oh, just realized you were specifically interested in integrated partners. Sorry. I jumped that ship a long time ago.As for keeping everything in Vin65, we just go through once/week and create an admin order for “group tasting tickets” to match the total quantity purchased that week through Rezdy, and the same for “private tasting tickets” (each SKU is in Vin65 for the respective price points) … that way the books are balanced.
Actually, maybe integrated partners but I also wanted to see if anyone solved the problem just using what is available in Vin65.
I appreciate the detailed response, it sounds like an awesome setup and I hope to be that big someday. For my purpose, I have only 1 canoe that can hold 12 people max, and I want to fill it up. No private paddlers. And I want to do 5 one hour canoe trips on a couple Saturdays a month. (Such a useful analogy, but now I really want to go up to the lake.)
Staying in Vin65, this could be managed by event tickets with inventory enabled, and train staff to select the inventory pool for POS bookings. I’d set up each date as one event ticket and set up SKUs for each time slot. The customer could visit the ticket page for the date they want, and then add the desired time slot to their cart.
(This is a case where being able to copy a product would REALLY help. If I recall Product Import doesn’t handle multi SKU products…)
Any updates on recommended reservation platforms? I see that CellarPass is integrated with Vin65. We’re looking to have customers book group tastings and wine tours through our website…
