Opening hours & closures

Your opening hours determine when guests can book tables online. Closures and blocks take individual days, sections or tables out of service on purpose. This keeps your online calendar always in sync with how your business actually operates.

Regular opening hours

Open My Restaurant → Opening Hours. For each weekday you add one or more time blocks with a start and end time. This is how you model a lunch break: one "Lunch" block and a second "Dinner" block. Optionally you can enter separate kitchen hours per block, in case the kitchen closes earlier than the venue.

1. Select a weekday and enter the times.
2. Use "+ Time block" to add a second block for the same day if needed.
3. The "Closed" tick on a block means: only this block is closed. All other blocks of the same day stay in place — so you can close just the lunch service and open as usual in the evening. If no block is left open, the day automatically becomes a rest day: no times and no bookable slots.
4. Save.

Seasons & special days

With "New season" you store different hours for a date range (for example a summer season). A new season is created as a copy of your standard hours — you then only change what is really different. For each season you can also choose a separate slot interval. Individual holidays such as Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve are handled as special days — there you set either "closed" or different time blocks for one specific date.

Which hours apply on a given day?

For every date exactly one source applies — hours from different sources are never mixed. The order is:

1. Special day — beats everything else.
2. One season — if several seasons cover the same date, the shorter one wins (the narrower date range); if both are equally long, the one that starts later. When you save an overlapping season we point this out.
3. Standard hours — everywhere no special day and no season applies.

A rest day in the applicable season really is a rest day: if you close on Mondays during the winter season, Monday stays closed — even if your standard hours are open on Mondays. Standard hours are only used if the applicable season has nothing at all stored for that weekday.

Your public page, the booking widget and the embed code always show the week that is valid today. If a season is currently running, its name and period are shown above the hours table.

Closures & blocks

Under My Restaurant → Closures you find four tabs:

• Restaurant — closes the whole business for a period (from/to), e.g. company holidays or renovation.
• Sections — blocks a single section (e.g. the terrace) for a period, either all day or just for a time window.
• Tables — blocks individual tables for a day, e.g. for a regulars' table or a private party.
• Public holidays — imports the statutory holidays of your federal state as special days (see below).

Block online bookings only

Sometimes you do not want to close at all — you just want to stop taking new online reservations, because the evening is full or you are suddenly short-staffed. Tick "Block online bookings only" in the form for that. You will find it in three places: on the closure under My Restaurant → Closures → Restaurant, on the section closure under Closures → Sections (e.g. "terrace by phone only on Saturday evening" — for the whole day or just a time window), and on a closed special day under Opening hours → Special days. The partner app offers the same switch when creating a closure or a special day.

• Guests no longer see any times on your booking page or in the widget. Instead they get the notice "Online booking is currently unavailable — please give us a call", together with your phone number.
• Your team carries on as usual: back office, calendar, day view, table plan, walk-in, POS and the partner app keep creating reservations — your regular opening hours apply.
• Existing reservations stay untouched. Nothing is flagged as "attention needed" and nothing is cancelled.

On a section closure the tick only affects the chosen section: its tables are no longer assigned online, while the other sections remain bookable as usual — and your team does not see the section as closed in the calendar or floor plan.

In the lists such a closure is marked with the "online only" badge. To reopen online booking, simply delete the entry. Without this tick everything behaves as before: a closure closes the whole business.

Importing public holidays automatically

The fourth tab, Public holidays, imports the statutory holidays for you: pick your federal state and the year (current or next) and click "Import public holidays". VidiReserve creates every holiday as a special day marked "closed" — including the movable dates such as Good Friday, Ascension Day or Corpus Christi. Your federal state is remembered and pre-selected for the next import.

Special days that already exist for the same date are never overwritten — the confirmation tells you how many days were imported and how many were skipped. Below the selection you see the special days of the chosen year and can remove individual entries. If you do open on a holiday, either delete the day here or switch it to different hours under Opening hours → Special days.

Effect on bookable slots

From these settings VidiReserve automatically calculates the online bookable slots: slots only appear within open time blocks, and a rest day or a block removes them. The slot interval (15–60 minutes) controls the cadence in which guests can book — the default comes from your booking rules but can be fine-tuned per season or special day.