Customer specific discounts
We would like to be able to give certain customers access to certain discounts - maybe by having a customer group feature which could then be linked to discount codes - we would then be able to offer our regular customers the ability to come back at a reduced rate without opening these codes up to the general public.
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Thanks for sharing this idea, Joanna!
I'm super interested to see how other operators might find this feedback related to their business needs as well.
I wanted to share how you and I went about approaching this with Checkfront as it is right now just in case others find the information useful.
Let's say a business offers memberships and those members can make one booking per day for a certain timeslot to use a pool.
What you can do is:
1. Create a day allocated item per member. Perhaps use a membership code in the item name to ensure personal information can never be obtained by the public.
2. Attach the general public activity item that is in timeslots as a required add-on. This will be how they choose their time preference.
3. Share the item-specific (member-specific) hosted booking page URL with the respective member and inform them that it is where they can make bookings.
Please note that this workaround does not guarantee that other customers cannot access these URLs although it would be incredibly unlikely if you choose to embed the specific public items/categories into your website with the Booking Widget.
If any other operators reading this would find customer-specific discounts or membership features to be useful for your business as well please join in on the conversation. We'd love to collect your related feedback and experiences. -
There should already be a feature request for customer specific pricing as I was told I was on the list for this request (see: https://www.checkfront.com/forum/discussion/comment/5008). I'll add specific details of my own use case:
- I have negotiated discounts for long-term and high-volume customers. For me, these either take the form of a fixed price discount on specific inventory items or a percentage discount on the whole booking. I already use the regular discount feature to create the customer discounts and that functionality work as is.
- The missing part is that there is no way to apply those discounts to a customer automatically. So if a customer makes an online booking, they see normal pricing and I have to adjust it manually on the backend. Right now I keep an external spreadsheet with the negotiated pricing. When a new booking comes in, I have to look up the customer and see if they have a discount and then apply the discount code manually.
- The solution for me would be to add the ability to attach discounts to customers profiles so that the process doesn't involve additional manual effort. Here's a mockup of how I would imagine this working:
The suggested workaround doesn't solve this type of problem since the goal would be for the discounts to be applied regardless if the customer makes the booking or if I enter it manually.
In terms of prioritization though, I would prefer the UI problems with the discounts to be fixed first since that regularly causes customer confusion and at least even without this feature I can do my manual workaround rather quickly.
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Thank you Phillip Hullquist for sharing the link to the already existing feature request that was created back in 2015… My name should be on that list too.
The best way for a Customer specific discount would be to be automatically applied once the Customer is logged in. Ideally, the price would be adjusted at all stages of the booking process, but I personally would be ok if the discount is only applied at the end. (But I'm sure most CheckFront users here would much prefer showing the discounted priced all along)
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Hi
We're new to Checkfront and are looking for a way to sell memberships. We want to sell different lengths memberships - one year and one month - each of which gives our customers access to certain services. We need members to book a time slot when they want to visit rather than just turn up on the day. The ideal way it would work for us would be:
A person buys a membership item that contains a certain amount of benefits such as unlimited tickets for a service. Whilst buying the membership they are required to make an account. When they come to book their session they log in and they can select the time for their visit and book without having to pay/enter code. The inventory would need to linked through aliasing so that the overall capacity isn't overbooked.
When setting up the membership item there should be options such as: how long it lasts; when it starts (i.e. from date of purchase) and which services are included at what price/for free/how many...However, if a specific discount code could be added to specific customer accounts, like Phillips suggestion, that would work too.
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I wrestled with something similar to this Alexandra with seasonal ski passes. We didn't need people to book specific visits but even just managing a pass that lasted a few months was quite challenging. I concluded that the system is currently better suited to specific time-bound events really. We did sell them through the system in a basic form though and learned a couple of tricks for keeping them available for purchase without clogging up the calendars with hundreds of active passes every day.
If the system was able to manage seasonal passes and memberships as you describe that would be a great improvement.
Rich
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I am also looking for a landing page discount code? we are using google Adwords to a landing page and if they sign up they get a code - at this time we are using a standard code which can be used a lot. an integration with Mailchimp would be great as MailChimp don't have you on board as an integration
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I was also looking at a landing page with a signup for a VIP club we were trying to launch for perks such as advance accommodation booking privileges for popular summer dates. I had inventory closed off however I could not figure out a way to open the dates up for just specific guests that were notified by mailchimp. I was also having to manually tag my mailchimp list for the newsletter subscribers that indicated they wanted to be VIP members. In the end it's been a bit of a schmozzle. I'm not sure if using customer accounts would work where customers log-in to access benefits or if would be better if there was an integration with mail chimp and the list there was segmented.
Other membership benefits might be early check-in or late checkout or a welcome amenity which could be added as an optional/required item for VIP members if there was a way to identify them in checkfront.
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Hi Heather Newman,
There isn't currently a way to limit availability based on customer accounts.
A potential workaround for your particular situation and, depending on how extensive your accommodation offers are, would be to create a category for VIP customers. From here, you can duplicate your accommodation items so that there are 'VIP versions'. These would be aliased to the regular public-facing items so that you can do both; prevent overbookings and have control over when they become available.
Additionally, you'd want to hide the VIP category with custom CSS to deter regular customers from accessing this category. This is not 100% reliable and secure but it would be unlikely that customers would be able to get around this.
Finally, you could potentially make a webpage specific for VIP members and perhaps password protect theis webpage, for example, with WordPress. Communicating this link and password could be done via Mailchimp.
Those other features such as welcome amenity could be offered only on your VIP items as package add-ons. However, the early/late check-in/out may not be perfectly manageable in terms of inventory management around it but you could certainly add optional fee items for this and manually manage the inventory involved in late/early check-ins and outs.
You are welcome to reach out to us at support@checkfront.com for further guidance with this! -
Aidan Paringer you'll want to add your name to this feature request....
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