AI Auto Optimization – More Guests on the Same Tables

A couple of two is seated at the table for six. The party of six that calls is told you are fully booked – even though the seats exist.

That is not a booking error. It is the sum of many reasonable decisions made separately, over a month, by guests who booked in whatever order they happened to book. AI Auto Optimization fixes it after the fact: it moves couples to two-tops and parties to tables that fit, so the large tables stay free for those who need them.

The point is not a tidy dining room – it is that the guest gets a table

The optimizer works across every upcoming booking day, up to six months ahead – not only the evening about to start. That is the whole idea: the value appears when the table is free at the moment the guest looks at your booking page, not when the evening is already lost.

Turn it on

Bokning → Inställningar → AI Auto Optimering (Booking → Settings → AI Auto Optimization)

Flipping the toggle always lands you in the cautious mode. Full optimization has to be chosen deliberately.

The two modes

Rädda bokningar (Rescue bookings) steps in only when someone would otherwise go without. A guest is on the waitlist, the space exists – but only if two tables swap guests. Then, and only then, the system moves anything. It touches nothing otherwise, so it can only ever be better than doing nothing.

Full optimering (Full optimization) does not wait for someone to be turned away. Every fifteen minutes it goes through upcoming booking days and packs them in advance, so the gaps are gone before the next guest even searches. More bookings get moved.

Changes the guest never notices

The system only moves a booking when all three conditions hold:

• Same time. No guest gets a new time. Only the table changes.
• Same part of the room. Someone who booked the dining room is never quietly moved to the bar. The system can suggest such a change, but never carry it out on its own.
• Never close to service. See the next section.

If the guest has a request tied to the table – a window seat, a quiet corner – the booking is not moved automatically. And the guest never receives an SMS about a table change: as far as they are concerned, nothing happened.

Stop moving (minutes before service)

This is the only time limit, and it matters. Once your staff start carrying the floor map in their heads, a silent reassignment becomes confusion rather than help.

180 means the day is locked three hours before its first booking. Raise it if you set up early and want peace; lower it only if you know nobody looks at the floor map until the guests arrive.

Lock a booking you do not want touched

The table choice on an individual booking can be locked. A locked booking is never moved by the optimizer – use it for the regular who always sits by the window, or for tonight's birthday table. Guests who are already seated are never moved either.

What you see afterwards

Every move lands in Bokning → Aktivitet (Booking → Activity), marked as automatic, showing the table before and after. If the system moved something on its own it also appears in the notification bell – as information, not a warning. Nothing is wrong; the system did exactly what you switched on. But you should never have to discover it while standing in the room wondering why the floor map changed.

Start cautiously

Turn on Rescue bookings first and let it run for a few days. Look at Activity: do the moves feel sensible? Then switch to Full optimization.

Expect the first run in full mode to move more bookings than the ones after it. It is clearing up everything that has accumulated since you started taking bookings; after that it simply keeps order.

Related: Waitlist – how it works, Understanding the booking calendar, Booking rules