Hi All, 

We wanted to inform you of some Reserve with Google changes that came into effect on the morning of Friday the 31st of January.

We have been liaising with the team at Google and they have informed us that they are continuing to update their policy regarding what can be offered as a reservation platform. To maintain consistency across all systems that offer bookings, they have disallowed us to feed anything other than Dining booking types to the Reserve with Google page. This will ultimately mean that booking types like the following will be accepted according to Google’s policy; 

• Breakfast
• Brunch
• Lunch 
• Dinner 

And the following will not be allowed as an option

• Cocktail Masterclass
• Drinks Table 
• Private Hire 

At the moment this will also mean booking types that can be defined as set menus, for example, Christmas Dinner or Valentines Day, won’t appear as an option however we are looking into what avenues can be explored with Google and will, of course, let you know as and when we hear of any updates.

What will you see? As Google set a hard deadline of Friday the 31st of January to implement these changes, we have been working really hard to make sure our integration and this change has been seamless for our clients. For this, we have built a new integrations page which will be enabled by default for those that offer bookings through Google and within this section, you’ll be able to see what availability will be visible to your customers via Google and what types will be inactive based on their policy. Over the last week, we have been sense checking the booking types that should be available so as to minimise any impact on our clients. 

More Information here. 

Do we require anything from you? Due to the amazing flexibility you have within Collins, some operators may have an overlap in booking type times.

EG: 

• Breakfast 7am – 11am
• Brunch 11am – 1pm
• Lunch 12pm – 3pm 

If this applies to you, we kindly ask for you to head to the new Integrations page (found in your venue settings) and spot check the priority of these booking types, should a customer select a time where both or a few are available. If you have any queries about your inactive booking types, please contact your Account Manager and we’ll do our best to help you. 

Going forward if you’re creating a new Dining booking type, make sure to use our template booking types as they will automatically feed to Google’s booking process. If you have created a blank booking type but believe it should be appearing on Google, please contact your account manager. 

It is really important to note that we are adhering to a policy that has been set by Google. This is not Collins specific but a rule in place for all systems. We will continue to work with Google to explore/open up other avenues and keep everyone updated with our findings. 

Thanks,

Team Collins x