Understanding BookingNinja's Yield Management

In most table booking software you'll find a feature called Yield management. It might go by other names like table management, table assignment or something similar, but generally speaking the core concept of yield management is the same - it takes bookings and then places them on to the table that suits them best. So how does BookingNinja's yield management system work; and what should you do to optimise your usage of our table booking software?

How Does Yield Work?

The system will at first always attempt to find the smallest possible table that matches the guest count. If 4 people are booking and you have 2 tables free - a 5 person table and a 8 person table, then the system will automatically decide that the 5 person table is more suitable as it ensures the larger table remains open to bigger groups. The system will constantly do this for each booking, ensuring that your venue remains are the maximum possible capacity.

This is the default, but there are several controls and options you can configure to refine how your yield management works. Firstly what happens if you have 4 identical tables of 5 but want the window tables filled up first? Not a problem. Navigating to your venue layout page you'll be able to set a priority for each table (or if you'd like, just some). Higher priority numbers get filled first; but the capacity check is still performed initially. So a high priority table of 6 will still get filled after a lower priority table of 4 when the guest count is less than 6.

Heres how to set priority - just head over to your venue layout section.

Want a table in the booking system but don't want it being able to be assigned to automatically by the public booking form? This is handy if you have some tables you want to leave for walk-ins but still have them so that your team can assign bookings to them. In this case simply hit the lock icon and that table will be locked to internal bookings only!

Communal Table Seating

Of course the above assumes that your venue has 1 table per a group; the standard in most restaurants, but what about if you offer communal table seating; the likes that Wagamama here in the UK use. With BookingNinja you can simply head over to the session you want to offer same table seating on and toggle the option! You can also decide to limit the same table seating to only groups that share the same session, so if you had for example an afternoon tea session and a prix-fixe menu, guests picking each would not be seated together.

When using a table booking system like BookingNinja's, yield happens after other limits you might have placed on your venue. If you've set a maximum guest count then regardless of how many tables and and spaces you have available, the maximum limit will be applied. For the majority of venues we'd suggest simply using the yield system to manage your limits - because with automatic table yield you can never get to a position where your venue has more guests than tables.