Overview
Priority Booking is a tool that controls which time slots are displayed to your customers when they're booking online. Instead of showing customers every available time slot at once, Priority Booking intelligently funnels them toward the times you want filled first — helping you avoid partially-booked time slots and operate more efficiently.
This feature has been part of Singenuity for a long time, but it has recently been expanded with significant new capabilities. The original version allowed you to specify how many time slots to display in two fixed phases of the day (AM and PM). The new version adds:
Starred start times — a "super priority" you can apply directly to specific time slots on specific days.
Configurable priority order — choose how the system ranks time slots (starred, partially booked, earliest).
Custom time spans — replace the rigid AM/PM split with your own time ranges, each with its own time slot display count.
Orphan availability prevention — automatically hide time slots that would leave a single unfillable seat behind.
Tip: Even with all the new options, the underlying goal is the same — show customers fewer time slots in a smarter order, so the right times fill up first.
How It Worked Before (The Original Behavior)
For context, the original Priority Booking feature divided the day into two fixed phases:
AM phase: 12:00 AM through 11:59 AM
PM phase: 12:00 PM through 11:59 PM
You set a number for each phase indicating how many time slots to display to online customers. For example, with AM set to 1 and PM set to 2, a customer would initially see one morning time slot and two afternoon time slots. As bookings came in, the system would shift which slots were shown to prioritize ones closest to being full.
Example (original behavior): A schedule has time slots at 8 AM, 9 AM, 10 AM, 11 AM, 12 PM, 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM. AM is set to 1 and PM is set to 2.
With no bookings yet, the customer sees 8 AM, 12 PM, and 1 PM.
A booking comes in on the 10 AM slot. Now the 10 AM is closer to filling than the 8 AM, so the system shifts to showing 10 AM instead of 8 AM. The 12 PM and 1 PM remain.
The system also accounts for party size — if a customer is booking for 4 guests, the system will only display time slots that can actually accommodate 4 guests, preventing customers from seeing options they can't actually book.
The new version of Priority Booking retains this core behavior and adds substantially more control on top.
Accessing Priority Booking
Priority Booking is configured per schedule. To get there:
Navigate to manage.singenuity.com and select Products in the top menu.
Open the activity you want to configure.
Go to the Schedules tab in the left-hand menu within that activity.
Open the schedule you want to configure and go to the Basic Info tab.
Scroll to the Priority Booking section.
Part 1: Priority Order
The first decision is how the system should rank time slots when deciding which ones to display. There are three options:
Starred → Partially Booked → Earliest (recommended) — Starred time slots are always shown first, then time slots closest to being full, then the earliest remaining open time slots. This gives you the most explicit control over what fills first.
Partially Booked → Starred → Earliest — Time slots closest to being full are shown first, with starred slots as a fallback, then the earliest remaining slots.
Earliest Only — Time slots are simply shown in chronological order.
The recommended order (Starred → Partially Booked → Earliest) gives you both manual override (via stars) and the automatic fill-up behavior the original feature was known for.
Part 2: Custom Time Spans
The original AM/PM split has been replaced with custom time spans. You can define any time ranges you want, as long as together they cover the full 24-hour day (12:00 AM through 11:59 PM).
For each time span, you'll configure:
Start time — When this span begins.
End time — When this span ends.
Number of time slots to show — How many time slots within this span should be visible to customers at any given moment.
Example: You could configure three time spans:
12:00 AM – 8:00 AM: Show 1 time slot
8:01 AM – 12:00 PM: Show 5 time slots
12:01 PM – 11:59 PM: Show 3 time slots
This gives you finer-grained control than the old AM/PM split — for example, prioritizing morning availability heavily during peak booking hours, while keeping early-morning and evening visibility lighter.
Note: Time spans must collectively cover the full 24-hour day. You cannot leave gaps or have overlapping spans.
Part 3: Prevent Orphan Availability
The Prevent Orphan Availability toggle, when turned on, hides a time slot from customers if booking it would leave only one open spot remaining on that slot. This prevents the awkward situation where a single seat sits unbooked indefinitely because no one is traveling solo.
When turned off, time slots remain visible until they're fully booked, regardless of how many seats remain.
Example: A time slot has a capacity of 8 and currently has 6 booked. A party of 1 attempts to book — with Prevent Orphan Availability on, this slot will not be shown to them, because booking it would leave only 1 seat remaining (an "orphan" that's unlikely to fill). A party of 2 would still see the slot, because booking them would fill it completely.
Part 4: Starring Start Times
After saving your Priority Booking settings, you can apply stars to specific start times to mark them as the highest priority within your chosen priority order.
From within the schedule, navigate to the Times tab.
For any start time you want to prioritize, select the star icon.
Starred times will now be displayed to customers ahead of other time slots (assuming your priority order has "Starred" as the first criterion).
Starring is useful for operational scenarios like:
Funneling customers to specific times when you have full staffing.
Prioritizing times that align with shuttle, transport, or guide schedules.
Featuring popular or marquee start times during peak booking periods.
Tip: Stars apply per start time per day, so you can fine-tune availability presentation for special days, holidays, or events without changing your default schedule configuration.
Part 5: Opting Out of Priority Booking
If you don't want to use Priority Booking at all and would rather have every time slot visible to your customers, you don't need to disable the feature — you just configure it to show everything.
To do this, enter a number into each time span that exceeds your total number of time slots. As long as the number is larger than the count of time slots in that span, every available time slot will be shown to customers.
A common convention is to enter 99 into each time span, since most operators have far fewer than 99 time slots in any given window. This effectively neutralizes the funneling behavior while keeping the rest of your schedule configuration intact.
Example: Your busiest time span has 20 time slots. Entering 99 (or any number greater than 20) into that span ensures all 20 are visible to customers at all times.
This approach is especially useful for operators who want full visibility for their customers and prefer to manage availability through other means — such as resource caps, max participants per time slot, or simply closing time slots they don't want bookable.
Common Use Cases
Here are some examples of how operators put Priority Booking to work:
Filling slots in operational batches — Define custom time spans that match your staffing windows (e.g., 9 AM–12 PM with 3 slots shown) so customers naturally book within blocks you're already prepared to operate.
Prioritizing high-margin or marquee time slots — Star your most operationally efficient or highest-margin start times so they fill before other times come into view.
Avoiding partial-booking inefficiency — Use the recommended Partially Booked priority to ensure once a time slot starts filling, customers continue funneling into it until it's full, rather than spreading thinly across many slots.
Eliminating orphan seats — Turn on Prevent Orphan Availability for activities where having a single unfilled seat causes operational headaches (e.g., per-vehicle tours where running with 7 of 8 seats vs. a full 8 has no real cost difference).
Troubleshooting: "Why aren't all my time slots showing up?"
One of the most common questions we receive in support is: "I have several time slots open, but my customers are only seeing one or two. What's wrong?"
In nearly every case, the answer is Priority Booking. The number you enter for each time span tells the system how many time slots to display at once — not a minimum or a default. If a time span is set to show 1 time slot, customers will only see 1 time slot within that span, no matter how many are actually open.
What to check
Open the activity, navigate to Schedules, open the relevant schedule, and go to Basic Info.
Scroll to the Priority Booking section and review the number you've entered for each time span.
If you want all of your time slots visible to customers, enter a number larger than your total number of time slots into each time span (99 is a common choice).
Save and check the booking site.
Tip: If you've recently added new time slots and they aren't appearing on the booking site, Priority Booking is almost always the cause. It's worth checking this setting before assuming there's a bug or another configuration issue.
Conclusion
Priority Booking gives you precise control over how customers experience your booking site — fewer choices, smarter ordering, and the ability to manually elevate specific times when needed. For most operators, the recommended configuration is Starred → Partially Booked → Earliest with time spans matching your operational rhythm.
For information on creating schedules in general, see the Creating Activity Schedules article. For information on adjusting capacity per time slot, see the Resources article.