Allocating product assets by guest type

Guest allocation settings let you assign product assets (such as vehicles, equipment, or spaces) according to different guest categories (like adults, youth, children, or seniors). This flexibility allows you to tailor how assets are used, helping maximize efficiency, better accommodate customer needs, and make resource management easier for you and your team.

You can read further to learn how to set up asset distribution by guest type. You can start by reviewing our use case example.

Learn more with related articles Be sure to read the previous article in this series for information on assigning assets by total quantity vs. capacity. Learn more about the Inventory tab here: Establishing inventory on products. New to the Product Builder? Read the first article in this series for an introduction to the Product feature.

Accessing the features mentioned in this article

Where can I find this feature using the top menu?

• Inventory > Products > Products > Add Product/Add New Product/Edit Product > Inventory
   

What more do I need to use this feature?

• Admin permissions to manage inventory or restricted permissions to View products and assets and Manage products and assets.
   

Which Checkfront version supports this feature - classic items, classic products, or both?

• Your account must have access to classic products (Inventory > Products), a key feature of our classic products version of Checkfront. This feature is not available for use with classic items (Inventory > Items) in our classic items version. → Learn more about products. 

Guest types are features that let you categorize the types of guests associated with your booking, for example: Adults, Youth, Children, and Seniors. 

You can assign pricing, quantity limitations, availability, and date restrictions to each guest type. They also allow for automatic inventory allocation.

This article uses the following use case to help you understand how Guest types can be applied to your business.

Use case example for this article You need to set up a public bus tour. The bus has a capacity of 30 guests. You welcome bookings for adults, youth, children, and babies (Guest types), but babies shouldn't take up a seat on the bus. A parent can hold the baby on their lap. You need to configure your products so the system does not allocate seats to babies when booked. Other use case examples, not covered in this article: As a boat rental operator, I want to set varying capacity consumption for adults and children based on safety gear so that I can ensure safe and efficient boat occupancy. As an adventure park manager, I want to specify how each guest type affects the total capacity for high-risk activities so that I can meet safety guidelines while optimizing the number of participants.

First you need to determine who the product is available to by adding guest types to your product.

1. Go to the Product Builder (Inventory > Products) to add a new product or edit an existing product.
2. Fill out the product details as needed.
3. Go to the Inventory tab of the Product Builder.
   
   
    
4. Using the Who is this product available to? setting, select which Guest types apply to this product. You can also add new Guest types via the + Create guest button. 
    

2. Setting up your assets by capacity

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Next, you need to add assets that are configured to Assign assets by total Capacity.

1. Select Assets as your Inventory type.
2. Click + Create asset to open the Create Assets modal. You can specify the asset's Name, Asset Category, Quantity, and Capacity from the modal.
   
   
   In the above example, we have created one tour bus with 30 available seats for the public to book for a bus tour product.
    
3. You can now see the new assets listed under the Assets setting. 
   
   
    
4. Ensure that the assets are assigned by Capacity so seats within the asset can be individually booked by the public (as opposed to booking by quantity, which results in the entire asset being booked with one booking, resulting in a private booking).
    

3. Choose which guest types are allocated assets

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Lastly, you need to choose which guest types are allocated assets.

 

1. Open the Guest Allocation dropdown to view the Guest type settings. These are the Guest types, as added in step 4 above.
   
    
    
2. You can turn off any Guest type you do not want the system to allocate seats to when booking, e.g., Baby. A message displays confirming the change. 
3. Continue setting up your products, including setting prices for all Guest types.
4. Click the Save button to save your changes.

Next Steps

In the following article in this series, we'll look at setting up products to share assets.

< Assigning assets to your products by quantity vs capacity |  Setting up products to share assets >