The trouble with a discount that has no hours
20% off at 21:00 on a Saturday fills nothing: at 21:00 on a Saturday you were already full. All it does is charge less to people who had booked anyway. That's money leaving your till without bringing in anyone new
Quiet hours are a different story. Early evening on a Tuesday, Monday lunchtime, the last sitting on a Thursday. There, one more table is a table that wouldn't have existed. There, an offer makes sense, because what you give away is paid back by someone who wouldn't have come
That's why, in Omakasia, a promotion isn't a free-floating discount. It's built on specific days and times, and the app itself warns you: a promotion stretched into the hours when you already fill up doesn't attract anyone new, it just lowers the price for people who would have come regardless
Built on your days and your hours
You create the promotion in your reservation book, under Marketing › Plan › Promotions, with ＋ Promotion. A six-question guide walks you through it: what you're offering, on what, which days, at what times, how many tables and who gets it. Nothing takes effect until you press Save
The guide only offers the days and times you're open. No time is typed in by hand, so a promotion can never promise a time when you're not serving. You can also give it an end date: when that day comes, it stops being offered on its own
The times step needs your attention. Every time comes ticked, so if you leave it alone the promotion runs all day. The usual move is to press Remove all and tick only the times you want to fill
Example · Casa Marlen, a made-up venue in Barcelona, gets fewer bookings on Tuesday evenings than the rest of the week. It creates 20% off wine, only on Tuesdays from 20:00 to 21:30, for six tables each Tuesday, until the end of November. The rest of the week, and the rest of Tuesday, stays at full price
A cap so you don't give the night away
Step five, How many tables, sets how many bookings can get the promotion each day. The screen sums it up in one line: so you don't give the whole night away. With a cap of six, it's the first six tables to book. Once they're gone, the promotion stops showing for that day, and on the next promotion day the count starts again
The cap turns the promotion into a cost you know in advance. You know the maximum number of tables that will get it. If it works better than expected, you won't find the whole dining room on a discount
Get the offer just right
A promotion can be a percentage discount, a 2-for-1 or a gift, which the screen describes as a little something from the house for whoever books. The discount can cover the whole menu or just some families: wine, desserts, rice dishes. 20% off wine alone doesn't cost the same as 20% off the whole bill
You also decide who gets it. With Only whoever books with it, the promotion rewards people who respond to the post: it goes to bookings made from the link, the QR or a time marked with a star. With Any booking at those times, it lowers the price of that slot for everyone. Either way, walk-ins without a booking never get it
If you already know what you want, you can tell Slinky, your AI assistant, in one sentence, the way you'd tell your manager: “20% off wine on Tuesdays from 20:00 to 21:30, six tables, until 30 November”. Slinky fills in the six questions and you check them before pressing Save
Then make sure people hear about it
A promotion nobody sees fills nothing. When you save it, Omakasia suggests a posting calendar: an announcement and, on every day it applies, a ‘promo today’ reminder. We prepare the posts for Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, with your photos and the booking link. You, or your agency or your community manager, post them
Afterwards, under What it brought in, you see how many bookings and how many guests each post brought. So you know whether your quiet Tuesday has stopped being quiet. Marketing is included with Omakasia Bookings, with no commission on the bookings a promotion brings in. See it on the Marketing page
Venues and people in the examples are made up
See Marketing