Your Sunday lunch comes with a free swim. The pool runs its own sessions, 75 minutes each, starting every 90 minutes from 10:00. A guest books a table for 12:20 and the booking page offers them a swim at 11:05. Not a time the pool has ever opened its doors. And when it ends, their table is ready that same minute, with nobody dry.
That was how a "before" add-on worked until this week: it counted back from the table by the length of the add-on and put the swim wherever that landed. It made sense for a welcome drink. It never made sense for anything with a timetable of its own. Now it does.
What an add-on session is
If you haven't used them yet: an add-on session lets a guest book one of your other sessions as part of the same booking. One booking flow and one payment, and two real reservations on your side, each holding its own tables or capacity.
You pick a main session, say Lunch, and attach any of your other repeating sessions to it. A pool session, a wine tasting, a tour of the gardens, a cocktail class. Each one appears as an "Add an experience" step after the guest has chosen their table time. They can take it or leave it, and if they take it, it goes on the same bill and the same confirmation.
You decide whether the add-on runs before or after the main booking, how the party carries over (everyone, or only certain guest types, so a children's activity only counts the children), and what it costs: the add-on session's normal price, a fixed amount, a per-person price, or free as part of the deal.
On your side the add-on is a booking in its own right. It sits in the pool session's diary at its own time with the guest's name on it, and the main booking carries a Package badge so the team can see the two belong together. The confirmation email lists both. Cancel the table and the swim goes with it.
Until now the add-on's time was always worked out from the main booking: after the table, it started the minute the table finished, and before the table, it finished the minute the table started.
What's changed
Every add-on link now has two new settings.
Start time has two options. "Ends just before this session (back-to-back)" is the old behaviour, and still the right choice for a welcome drink or a safety briefing. "Guest picks from the add-on session's own time slots" is the new one: the booking page reads the add-on session's real timetable for that day and offers the guest the times that fit before the table.
Gap (minutes) is the changing time. Set it to 30 and a swim has to be over at least half an hour before the table is ready. It works with either start-time option and in both directions, so a back-to-back add-on can leave a gap too, and an add-on after the table can wait a while before it starts.
Setting it up
Open the main session in the session editor and go to the Features tab. Switch on Addon Sessions if it isn't already, add a row for the session you want to offer, and set When to "Before this session". The two new fields sit underneath: choose "Guest picks from the add-on session's own time slots" under Start time, and type your changing time into Gap (minutes).
A callout appears to remind you what the guest will get: only times that leave the gap and have availability, with the closest one picked for them.
That's the whole job. The add-on session's own opening times and slot interval decide the timetable, so if the pool runs every 90 minutes from 10:00, that's what guests are offered. Change the pool's hours and the add-on follows, with nothing to update on the lunch session.
What your guests see
The "Add an experience" step now shows the add-on as a card with a row of times underneath. Only the times that fit are there. Book a 14:30 table with a 15-minute changing gap and a 75-minute spa session offers 10:00, 11:30 and 13:00. Book 12:00 and it offers 10:00, because that's the only session that finishes in time.
One tap on a time adds the session and sets it. The card shows the slot they've chosen, the chip fills in, and the button changes to "Continue with selection". Tapping the card itself, rather than a time, adds the session at the slot closest to their table, as long as it's free.
A time that's full is shown struck through and can't be tapped, so guests don't find out at the end that the 11:30 has gone. Availability is checked for every time on the row, not just the one picked for them, and it's checked again when they pay, the same as the table itself.
Here's the difference side by side on a 13:00 table. On the left, the old back-to-back timing: a spa session from 11:45, a time the spa has never run. On the right, the real choices.
The chosen session carries through to the details page and the confirmation, with its own time next to the table.
When the table time moves
Guests change their minds. If someone picks an 11:30 swim and then moves their table from 14:30 to 12:00, the 11:30 no longer fits. The booking page moves the swim to the nearest time that does, tells them so, and brings them back to the add-ons step so they can see where it landed and change it if they'd rather. If the swim they chose still fits, nothing moves and nobody is interrupted.
A few things worth knowing
The add-on session needs a fixed timetable, so this is for repeating sessions with a slot interval. Ticketed events already run at their own times and don't need it, and a session that works out its slots dynamically from the bookings already in can't offer a fixed list, so the editor won't let you pick own slots for one of those.
Coarse timetables and long gaps squeeze the earliest tables. With 75-minute sessions starting at 10:00 and a 30-minute gap, a 12:20 table can only take the 10:00, and anything before 12:00 gets nothing at all. The step says so plainly ("No times fit before your booking"), but if you'd rather the early tables had more choice, a shorter gap is the lever. The add-on's own hours are the other one: open the pool at 9:00 and the 11:00 tables get a session too.
The gap applies to back-to-back add-ons as well. If you were already offering a welcome drink before dinner and wanted ten minutes between the two, you can have it now without changing anything else.
Everything else about add-on sessions is as it was: the party carries over the way you set it, and the price lands on the same bill.
This one came from a venue with a pool and a Sunday lunch deal, who spotted straight away that the swim times on the booking page weren't times the pool ran. Tell us what you'd like add-ons to do next.