Venue type · Afternoon tea
Afternoon tea bookings in set sittings, for the hotel lounge, tea room or restaurant
Nobody drops in for afternoon tea. It is booked weeks ahead for a birthday or a mother, it is served in sittings, and every stand is built before anyone sits down. The booking has to arrive in the same shape the kitchen prepares in.
Slotora sells no gift vouchers; a deposit for a sitting goes through your own Stripe account, once you have connected it. This page says where that leaves you.
How afternoon tea is booked
Most places serve it in two or three sittings — around noon, mid-afternoon and, at the weekend, a later one — each lasting about an hour and a half to two hours. Tables are mostly twos and fours, with the occasional party of eight for a hen afternoon or a ninetieth. Weekends book out first; Mother's Day and the weeks before Christmas book out long before that.
Because the sandwiches, scones and pastries are made for a known number, a late cancellation or an empty table is food already prepared. That is why so many tea rooms take payment up front and ask about dietary needs when the booking is made — and why a booking page that offers any time of day is the wrong tool.
Sittings, rooms and seasons
Each sitting as its own service
A sitting is set up as a service with a single start time: 12:00, 14:30, 17:00 on Saturdays. Guests choose a sitting, not a quarter of an hour, and the kitchen gets its numbers per sitting.
Only in the lounge
In a hotel, the afternoon tea service can be tied to the lounge or the drawing room only, so it never opens the restaurant at three o'clock, and dinner never offers the lounge sofas.
A Christmas tea with its own dates
A festive afternoon tea is a service limited to the dates you run it — the first of December to the twenty-third, say — beside the usual one, and it disappears from the booking page by itself afterwards.
Opening the diary on a set day
If Mother's Day sells out the hour it appears, open dates a fixed number of days ahead at a fixed time of day, so everybody gets the same fair start instead of whoever rang first.
On the afternoon
- The occasion the guest named when booking — a birthday, an anniversary — is on the briefing before the first sitting, so the candle and the card are ready.
- Party limits online: up to six book themselves; above that it becomes a request you confirm, which is where the hen party tells you about the prosecco.
- A party that never arrives is marked as a no-show and counted on their guest card for the next time they book.
- Guests cancel, change the number of people or move to another sitting — the same day or a different one — from the link they are shown after booking, choosing only from sittings that still have room.
Three things afternoon tea needs, and where each one stands
Gift vouchers. A large share of afternoon teas are bought as presents. Slotora does not sell or redeem vouchers; keep your current way of selling them, and book the voucher holder like any guest.
Payment up front. With your Stripe account connected, a booking rule asks for a deposit or a card guarantee when the guest books a sitting, and the money is settled after the visit: a stand built for a guest who never came is no longer yours alone to pay for.
Dietary choices with the booking.Gluten-free or vegan stands cannot be pre-ordered on the booking page, which has no diet or allergy field — only an optional note, where a guest may write “gluten-free”. That note stays on the one booking; once a guest has told you, your staff write it on their guest card, and from then on it shows on every booking they make and in the briefing before the sitting — so the regular who is coeliac only has to say it once.
Afternoon tea questions
Can the weekend have a third sitting that weekdays do not?
Yes. Each sitting is a service with its own days, so the late sitting can exist on Saturdays and Sundays only.
Can the lounge take afternoon tea while the restaurant is closed?
Yes. A service can be tied to some rooms only; the lounge can be open for tea while the dining room offers nothing until dinner.
Do the tables in the lounge need to be drawn?
Yes, once: the lounge is a room on the floor plan with its tables placed where they actually stand, so a booking lands on a real table.
Before Mother's Day books out
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