Set Booking Participants with WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments

This tutorial helps you set up booking participants using WooCommerce Bookings and Appointment Plugin and configure a cost for every participant while placing a booking on your website.

Booking Participants

The Bookings Participants feature allows users to add a section along with the booking calendar where customers can enter a numerical value. This tool can be used to set up cases where you need a number for calculating the booking cost, determining your inventory, managing resources, and much more.

Clients can mention the number of people joining an event or the number of additional fishing rods required for your Fishing Lake rental. Anything. You can even use this feature to set an age limit for bookings. This way, customers can book your resource only when they fall under a certain age range. So depending on how you use this feature, achieving the required business case won’t be a difficult job to do.

Setting Up Booking Participants

You need to log in to your WordPress as admin and get into the Edit product page of your desired product. Click on Booking Participants.

Booking Participants configuration options:

• Multiply all costs by the number of participants
  • You can use the thin option if you want to charge the booking cost for each participant without marking each participant as a separate booking
• Consider each participant as a separate booking
  • You can use this option if you want to make sure every participant is considered as a separate booking. Useful in cases like Ticket Booking or Online Class Booking, etc.
• Booking participant rules
  • You can use this option if you want to create flexible participant cost calculation rules based on various factors like the time slots selected for booking, time duration, etc.

Offer Additional Services Along With Bookings

You can offer additional services to the customers when they book a resource. Go to Booking Participants and then define Enable Participants. Mention the name of the item under Participant Label/Type. Define a minimum and a maximum number of items that will be allowed per booking. You can choose to define the Base Cost for each item if you want to add a one-time cost or you can define a cost for each unit item that the customers book using Per Participant Cost.

Let’s say you own a small party equipment rental business where you offer various package deals. Each package comes bundled with 50 chairs that the clients can use. But let’s say your client needs a few extra sets of chairs. In that case, you’d have to come up with the following configuration.

The result:

You can see in the image below how the cost is calculated for each additional chair selected by the customer. Every chair costs $0.75 on top of the one-time booking cost of $50. 

Offer Fixed Cost Along With Cost Per Person

You have to mention the name of the item under Participant Label/Type. Define the minimum and maximum number of people that will be allowed per booking. You can also charge more on per person basis.

Let’s assume that you own a resort where you offer various services like a spa, massage parlor, etc., to individual guests. In this case, you need the customers to mention the number of people that are going to join.

The result:

You can see in the image below how the cost is calculated for each person selected by the customer. With a one-time cost of $10 and a $50 booking cost, every person is charged $5.

Charge Booking Price Based On Age Of Guests

You have to set the booking cost and then define the minimum or the maximum number of participant’s age. Then you need to mention the price as shown in the image below.

The result:

Limit the Number Of People Booking An Event/Rental/Service

You can also limit the number of people that will be included in a booking. Go to the Booking Participants section and then mention the maximum number of people that are going to be considered in a booking. Here’s an example.

The result:

Multiply All Costs By the Number Of Participants

You can allow the plugin to calculate the total cost by multiplying each individual cost by the total number of items or participants. Go to Booking Participants and then enable the Multiply all costs by the number of participants.

The result:

Specifying Booking Cost Based On The Participant Count

Apart from the basic booking scenario, where all you require is the participants and the cost associated with it, there can be some complex scenarios where you require a different cost for the different number of participants for a booking. You can easily set up the cost for every participant based on how many participants are there, in the section shown below.

You can set up rules for a single participant or use Participant Total Count and create one rule for all your participants and calculate the cost for them.

Let us know if you find this article useful. And if you have any queries regarding the Booking Availability setup then feel free to comment down below!