Don’t turn away potential customers who are interested in reserving an experience that is currently sold out. With Xola’s Waitlist feature, you can maximize your capacity and capture more reservations, even when events fill up. If an event sells out and a spot becomes available due to a cancellation or adjustment, Xola will automatically fill those newly opened slots with guests waiting in line—keeping your experiences at maximum capacity and minimizing lost revenue.
For guests with flexible schedules, Xola’s waitlist allows them to join for a range of possible times, giving you the best chance of filling open spots as soon as they become available. Waitlisted customers will see a clear “Join Waitlist” option during checkout whenever there aren’t enough open spots for their group, making it easy for them to express continued interest and opt in. You can also add guests to the waitlist manually from your Xola Dashboard, accommodating phone inquiries or walk-ins who want to be first in line if plans change.
This approach ensures your operation maintains strong customer relationships—no guest feels turned away, and you have a ready pool of enthusiastic guests to tap when availability shifts. The Waitlist feature keeps every experience as full as possible, supports last-minute business, and helps you say “yes” to more customers, more often.
User Access: Admin or Curator roles have access to set up waitlist in Xola.
Admin, Reservationist Lite or Reservationist roles can add and manage waitlist reservations in Xola.
Equipment Manager, Guide Manager or Guide roles can only view waitlist reservations on the Roster.
To grant access to users, click here.
What's covered in this article:
- How to Enable Waitlist
- How to Configure Waitlist for an Experience
- Waitlist: Front End Checkout
- Waitlist: Back Office
- View Waitlisted Customers
How to enable Waitlist
- Locate Waitlist in the Xola App Store and select it.
- Click Install > Agree > Finish.
How to Configure Waitlist for an Experience
- Navigate to Products > Experiences and select the
icon to edit your experience. - Select Waitlist from the left side menu.
- Toggle Enable Waitlist for Back Office and/or Enable Waitlist for Checkout.
- For Checkout Only: Either use the default or custom checkout message that is displayed to your customers when there is an event time available for the waitlist.
- Next, under configure your Waitlist Settings.
- Limit waitlist spots: toggled on this limits how many guests can waitlist into the event.
For example, if you set the limit to 5, then only 5 guests can be signed up for the waitlist, and after these 5 guests, the waitlist will not be shown to customers.
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- Automatically send purchase invites to:
- All waitlisted groups that can fit the open spots
- Automatically send purchase invites to:
For example, send an email automatically to any customer that fits into that event time and the number of seats that just opened.
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- Groups whose waitlisted quantity would fill up at least X % of open spots
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For example, you have set the percentage to 50%, and there are two waitlisted groups, one with 5 guests and another with 2 guests. If 6 spots open up, only the group of 5 will be invited. This helps prevent smaller groups from taking up spots that larger groups could have used.
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- Delay first invitation by X minutes
- If toggled off, waitlist emails will send to all guests as soon as spots open.
- If toggled on and the time is set, the waitlist email will be delayed for that much time before sending it to guests.
- Delay first invitation by X minutes
- Allow waitlist on events where capacity has been manually capped:
- If toggled on, then when you cap an event on your dashboard, then waitlist will still show for guest to be added to.
- If toggled off, when you cap an event on your dashboard, then the waitlist will not show to guests for those events.
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Ensure email notifications are enabled for waitlists (go to Settings >> Notifications and check Join Waitlist). If this setting is disabled, customers will not receive an email when they join a waitlist.
Waitlist: Front End Checkout
When you enable Waitlist for Checkout, you’ll be prompted to choose either Xola’s standard checkout message or create your own custom message. This message will appear to customers at checkout whenever their selected event time that does not have enough open spots to accommodate the number of guests entered in the Quantity section during checkout.
What the Customer will see
Say that a customer wants to book the 6:00 PM time slot on June 12th, but it is already at capacity. That customer would see the following at checkout:
Once they've entered all of their contact information, they can click the Join Waitlist button to join the waitlist.
A customer has the option to have a flexible time range in which they would be able to visit.
- If they opt-in they will be put on the waitlist for the time range they entered. If the spots open they will receive an invitation to book via email.
- They will also be presented with other event times that are open if in the time range they enter.
Customers who successfully join the waitlist will see this message, along with the option to continue shopping:
They'll also receive an email notifying them they are on the Waitlist.
If spots open up, they will receive an email inviting them back to make a purchase (if configured):
Waitlist: Back Office
If Waitlist is turned on for a given experience, you can waitlist a customer from your Xola dashboard.
When the back office waitlist is enabled, the Join Waitlist button will appear for all events with 0 availability (future events only).
Waitlist availability is based on your event’s active capacity. If you manually black out an event, the waitlist will be disabled for that event in both the back office and checkout.
Click the Join Waitlist button, a pop-up window will ask you to gather additional information from the customer to join the waitlist.
You have the option to give them a flexible time range in which they would be able to visit.
- If the customer opts in, they will be put on the waitlist for the time range you entered. If spots open for an event within the specified time range, the customer will receive the email to book.
The customer will receive an email notifying them they are on the Waitlist, and if spots open up, they will receive an email inviting them to make a purchase (if configured).
View Waitlisted customers
When on your Dashboard, you can easily see in all views (List, Day, Week, and Month) how many waitlisted guests you have for each time slot. Waitlisted guest counts will show beside your reserved guests.
To filter your dashboard by Waitlisted customers:
- Navigate to your Dashboard.
- Next to the Reserve view, click on the Waitlisted view.
- Now, you will see only event times that have waitlisted guests.
From the roster, you can select the 3-dot menu to the right of a waitlisted group to see available actions.
- Confirm: will not show if the event does not have capacity. If you click Confirm you will be given options for how you wish to collect payment.
- Invite to book: will also only be displayed if the event has capacity. Once you choose this option, your customer will receive an email inviting them to confirm and pay for their waitlisted reservation.
- If they have a flexible time they selected during checkout, you will be given the option to choose which time slot you want to invite them to:
- Send Message: will allow you to send a message to your waitlisted guest.
- Rebook Customer: will allow you to rebook this customer into another event or experience.
- Remove from Waitlist: will allow you to remove a customer from the waitlisted group.