Venue groups
A venue group is a named set of your venues that you manage together. Groups are how you handle multi-location and franchise venues on Sidedoor: put two or more venues in the same group and they share gift vouchers, recommend each other to guests, and can be discovered together on the guest search page under your own branding.
You create a group and tick the venues that belong to it - there’s no need to link venues to each other one by one.
Where to find groups
Section titled “Where to find groups”Open Venues in the client portal. There’s a Venues / Groups sub-navigation under the header:
- Venues is the usual grid of every venue you can access.
- Groups lists your venue groups.
Group management is scoped to you: you only see your own operator’s groups, and you can only add a venue to a group if your account can access that venue.
Creating a group
Section titled “Creating a group”On the Groups tab, choose + Add group. A panel opens on the right where you fill in:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The group’s name, for example The Sidedoor Group. Required. Shown to guests on the discovery banner and the “View more” button. |
| Description | A short line about the group. Optional. Shown under the group name on the discovery banner. |
| Group image | The hero banner shown on the group’s discovery page. A landscape image works best. Up to 2 MB. |
| Logo | The group’s logo. A square image (a transparent PNG works well) is best. Up to 2 MB. |
| What this group does | Three toggles that pick which jobs the group performs: Availability fallback, Share vouchers and Featured landing page. All three are on by default; turn off any you don’t want. See What a group does below for what each one controls. |
| Venues | The venues that belong to the group. Search the list and tick each one - your picks show as chips above the list. Use the up/down arrows on each chip to set their priority: that order decides which sister venue is recommended first under availability fallback (first = preferred). |
Both images open a crop tool when you choose a file, then Sidedoor optimises them before upload, the same as everywhere else in the portal.
Choose Save group and the new group appears in the table, showing its logo, name, description and member venues.
Editing and deleting a group
Section titled “Editing and deleting a group”The Groups table lists each group with its logo, name, description and member venues. Select a row to reopen the panel with everything pre-filled: change the name, description, images or membership and Save.
To remove a group, open it and choose Delete. Deleting a group only removes the grouping. The member venues themselves are untouched - they simply stop being grouped together.
What a group does
Section titled “What a group does”A group can do three jobs across Sidedoor. Each is a separate toggle in the What this group does section of the create/edit panel, and all three are on by default, so a brand-new group does all three unless you turn one off. You can mix and match: a venue can belong to several groups with different toggles active on each, for example one group just for shared vouchers and another just for availability fallback.
Shared gift vouchers
Section titled “Shared gift vouchers”Controlled by the Share vouchers toggle.
A gift voucher bought at one venue in a group can be redeemed at any other venue in that group. The purchase email and the guest’s voucher detail page list every venue where the voucher can be spent. See Gift vouchers for how vouchers work.
Cross-venue recommendations
Section titled “Cross-venue recommendations”Controlled by the Availability fallback toggle.
When a venue in a group is closed or fully booked for the date a guest is looking at, its group co-members can be recommended to the guest as other places to try - so a booking stays within your group rather than being lost. This is the “our other venues” pivot in the booking widget and wizard.
Group discovery on search
Section titled “Group discovery on search”Controlled by the Featured landing page toggle.
A group has its own view on the guest search page. When guests reach it (through a link you share - there’s no group filter control in the search interface itself, it’s for marketing and discovery), they see:
- the group hero image as a banner, with the group name in the lower-left corner and the description beneath it (a group with no hero image falls back to a plain named panel), and
- a results grid scoped to the group’s venues (only venues that are live and bookable appear).
On an individual venue’s page, guests also see a “View more from [Group Name]” button below the location map, linking to that group’s discovery view. A venue that belongs to more than one group shows one button per group.