Spa managers: booking treatment rooms and couples treatments

Plan your bookable slots around two limits: the number of treatment rooms and the number of therapists on shift. At any given time, open no more parallel treatment slots than you have free rooms and people, leave turnaround time between treatments in the same room, and sell couples treatments as one slot with two places in your double room. Guests then book only times you can actually deliver, and you never have two guests waiting for one room.

A spa with three single rooms and one double room can deliver no more than five treatments at the same time, and only if five therapists are working. On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page, and each slot belongs to one service, sits within one day and has its own capacity. Book doesn't know about rooms, and slots of different services can overlap, so the room count is a rule you apply when you open slots.

Give each therapist their own services, such as "Signature massage with Nora", and open their slots for the hours they work. Then check each hour of the day: if more therapists are working than rooms are free, stagger their start times or give one of them a treatment that uses another space, such as a manicure station. A grid with rooms across the top and hours down the side, filled in once per rota, keeps this quick, and you only redo it when the rota or the rooms change.

Durations, places and prices are examples: set your own. For a couples treatment, the price is per place or per couple; say which in the description.

Between two treatments in the same room, you need time to change linen, clean surfaces, reset oils and towels and let the room breathe. Build that into the slot pattern: a sixty-minute massage might sit in a seventy-five-minute rhythm, with the slot showing sixty minutes and the next slot starting fifteen minutes after it ends. The guest sees the treatment length; the gap protects the next guest's start time.

Create a couples service with slots of two places, opened only when the double room and two therapists are free. Each online booking takes one place, so each person books their own place, or one partner books one and calls you to book the second. When a couple books by phone, book both places yourself from your calendar; first and last name are required for each, email and phone optional. Once both places are taken, the slot is full and leaves your page.

Your page doesn't show places left, so a couples slot with one place booked still appears. Say in the description that couples treatments are for two guests booked together, and if a second booking doesn't follow, call the first guest to confirm the second name or move them to a single treatment. Ask in the booking note for the partner's name so you can match the two bookings.

A broken heater in one room or a therapist off sick removes capacity from booked days. Check the bookings affected and move each guest from your bookings list: rescheduling works across services, so a massage with one therapist can move to a colleague's slot or another time. Call each guest yourself, since Book doesn't email clients about changes, and guests can't move bookings online. The new booking appears in your bookings list, and your bookings sync with Google, iPhone or Mac calendars.

The booking form takes first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that reaches you in the new booking email and appears in the guest's calendar file. Ask in the description for pregnancy, allergies to oils or products, and pressure preferences, so the therapist can prepare the room. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.