Deposits that fit your venue
The mechanics live in Payment Settings. This guide is about choosing numbers that work, learned from actually running rooms rather than from a spreadsheet.
Per Room or Per Person?
- Per Room fits venues where the room is the product: karaoke, private dining, party rooms. The cost of a no-show is the empty room, and it costs the same whether 4 or 10 people ghost you.
- Per Person fits per-head economics: large group dining, events, classes. It also scales the commitment with the party. A 15-top putting down 15 × $10 will call you if plans change. They will not for $20 flat.
How much?
The deposit's job is psychological commitment, not loss coverage. What we have seen work:
- Small rooms / weekdays: $20–30 per room, enough to make it real.
- Prime rooms / weekends: roughly your first hour's rate. A no-show on a Friday 9 PM room is your most expensive empty seat of the week.
- Per person: $10–15. Below $10 it reads as a fee, not a reservation.
Credit the deposit toward the bill. Then honest guests pay nothing extra, and you have filtered out exactly the people who were never sure they were coming. Say it right on the page via your policy text so there is no surprise at checkout time.
Watch one number
After a month, compare no-shows before and after in Analytics. If bookings dropped hard but no-shows barely moved, your amount is high for your market, so halve it and re-check. Usually it is the reverse: bookings hold steady and no-shows collapse.