Events and the What's On widget

Most sites have things guests ought to know about before they arrive: a folk weekend in the barn, a quiz night, a village fête next door, the pool closing for a day. Telling people one booking at a time is work that gets forgotten.

An event does it for you. You add it to the calendar once, with the details in your own words, and every guest whose stay overlaps those dates is emailed. The same event can be listed on your own website through the What's On widget.

Events are available on the Growth plan and above — see pricing.

Adding an event

Open your calendar and click Add event. The page asks for:

• Event name: what guests will see as the heading, for example Summer folk weekend.
• First day and last day: both days are included. A one-day event has the same date in both.
• Description: the public text. This is what the What's On widget shows on your website.
• Show this event in the What's On widget: ticked by default. Untick it for something guests need to know but you would rather not advertise, such as maintenance work.
• Information for guests: the text that is emailed. Write whatever a guest staying over those dates should know: times, where to park, what to bring, whether it will be noisy.
• Who is this for?: guests on any pitch type, or only certain ones.

The description and the information for guests are separate on purpose. The description is public and sells the event to people who have not booked yet. The information for guests goes only to people who are coming, and is never shown on your website.

Save, and the event appears above the calendar and as a pink bar under the days it covers. Click it there to edit or delete it.

Who gets the email

Any guest whose stay overlaps the event, on a pitch type the event covers. A stay overlaps if the guest is on site on any day of the event, and that includes the day they arrive and the day they leave. Someone checking out on the morning of the first day is still told.

The email is separate from the booking confirmation. Its subject is What's on during your stay at followed by your site's name, it carries the event name, its dates and your information, and it is signed with your site's name. Replies go to your own email address. If a stay covers two of your events, both arrive in one email.

It is sent when the booking is confirmed:

• Paid or instantly confirmed bookings get it straight away, alongside the confirmation.
• Pending bookings get it when you confirm them, not before.
• Bookings you create in the dashboard or at the POS desk get it too, as long as the guest has an email address.

Nobody is emailed about the same event twice for the same booking, however many times the booking is edited or its status changes.

Guests who have already booked

When you add an event for dates that already have bookings, the page shows a tick box: Also email the guests already booked for these dates, with the number of guests it would reach. The number follows the dates and pitch types as you change them.

Tick it and those guests are emailed once when you save. A guest with several bookings over the dates gets one email, not one per booking. The message at the top of the calendar tells you how many went out.

The box is unticked by default, so adding an event never emails anyone already booked unless you ask for it. If you edit the event later and tick the box again, only guests who have not had the email yet are sent it.

When no email is sent

• The information for guests is empty. The event still shows on your calendar and in the widget; it just emails nobody.
• The booking is pending or cancelled.
• The guest has no email address, as with some walk-in bookings.
• The event is already over.
• The booking is on a pitch type the event does not cover.
• The booking came in from a channel. Bookings imported from Pitchup or blocked by an iCal channel do not send the automatic email. If an imported booking has the guest's email address, the "guests already booked" tick box does include it, so re-saving the event with the box ticked catches them up.

Every email that is sent appears in your email log, if your plan includes it, with its delivery status.

Changing or deleting an event

Open the event from the calendar and edit anything. Changes to the text apply to emails sent from then on; guests who have already been emailed are not sent the new version. If the change matters, such as a new start time, message those guests from their bookings.

The edit page shows how many guests have been emailed so far.

Deleting an event removes it from the calendar and the widget, and stops any further emails. It does not tell guests the event is cancelled.

The What's On widget

The widget lists your upcoming events on a website you already have: the name, the dates and the description, in date order, with an On now label on anything under way. Events that have finished drop off on their own. If you take bookings online, a Book your stay button under the list opens your booking page.

It uses the same colour and font as your other widgets, and shows in your site's language. When there is nothing coming up it says so, rather than leaving a gap on your page.

To add it, go to Widgets in your dashboard, copy the What's On code and paste it into your page, exactly as for the other widgets. Adding widgets to your website covers the steps, with separate guides for WordPress, Wix and Squarespace. The code looks like this:

<div id="campmanager-events" data-slug="your-site"></div>
<script src="https://campiamo.com/embed/events-widget.js" defer></script>

Once it is on your page there is nothing more to do. Add, change or delete an event on your calendar and the widget follows.

If your plan changes

Events need the Growth plan or above. If an account moves down to the free plan, its events stay saved but stop working: no emails are sent and the widget shows nothing coming up. Moving back up switches them on again.