Definition
Experience booking
What is an experience booking?
An experience booking covers any scheduled, capacity-limited activity sold online — classes, tours, sessions, retreats — where the customer picks a date or time and pays in advance.
On Zillo, experience businesses use one of three product shapes depending on how they sell. A recurring single-night class or tour (a Saturday cooking class with several upcoming Saturdays) is an event ticket with multiple dates: customers see the upcoming dates and pick one at checkout, each attendee gets their own per-seat QR. A salon or coaching service is an appointment booking against a resource's weekly hours: customers pick any open time, the store never double-books. A class pack or multi-session course (one purchase covers N sessions) is a multi-use voucher: one purchase, N walk-in visits, scanned at the door each time.
Capacity is the heart of every shape. Good software holds the seat at checkout so two customers can't take the last spot at once, preventing oversell on a class or tour with a hard limit on numbers.
Custom intake questions are supported throughout — dietary requirements, skill level, group size — so you have what you need before the customer arrives.
Experience bookings sit between tickets (a single fixed occasion) and memberships (ongoing recurring access): they are scheduled, paid, one-off (or multi-session) reservations. Cooking classes, walking tours, tastings, surf lessons, and studio time all fit one of the three shapes above.
Related terms