Planning the Event - Adding the Itinerary

1. What is the itinerary
2. How to add itinerary items to the itinerary
3. Settings - What do they mean?
4. How to Edit/Delete Itinerary items
5. Adding a template to the itinerary
6. Itinerary notes
7. Itinerary operational notes
8. How do the days work?
9. Academy Video Guide [New]
10. Next Steps

What is the itinerary

The itinerary is the backbone of the event, where you can put in all details for the event day(s) itself. In Hostology, there is an itinerary and then the Itinerary items, which make up the days.

• Itinerary - The Overall itinerary, can include multiple days.
• Itinerary items - These build up the itinerary, can be for operational parts, meals or main parts of the day.

You can create an itinerary from scratch for all of your events, or you can save time and upload a template from the venue management level, with some pre-made itinerary items that you can easily import into the event at a click of a button. Check out this article here for how to create an itinerary template.

The itinerary is the main planning component of the event, where it has all the key details of the immediate event days for the event. The itinerary can be made visible to your customers. You can also have items within the itinerary that are internal only to your venue team (I.e. Operational items, or set-up items that your customers won't want to know about!).

The itinerary is also linked to Food & Drink, which is a key area of Hostology for any venues who offer in-house catering or bar options. You can learn more about setting up your food & Drink options or how to use Food & drink at the event level here. As before, this information can then be shared with your customers, so that they in turn can then confirm which of their guests will be involved with these - and share their all important dietary information with you on this too (Linking the whole process and saving you time).

How to add itinerary items to the itinerary

If you want to add itinerary items to an event, you can simply do this by going to 'Event Planning' then clicking on the itinerary tab for the specific event you want to update. Once on this tab, you will then see the itinerary page. At the bottom of each day there will be an option that says "Add Itinerary Item". Click this button.

Select this and a new menu will appear, prompting you to add in the details for this new itinerary item. When creating an itinerary item you will have the following options to select:

• What's Happening? - This is the name of the itinerary item. E.g. "Speeches", "Prepare Rooms", "Guests Arriving".
• Location - Where this event is happening within your venue (this is optional, and you can create bespoke options).
• Start time - When this event begins
• End time (optional) - When the event will end (this is optional as some items can be ongoing!)
• Visible - Visibility to your customer. See Settings tab for more details
• Editable - Whether your customer can edit the item. See Settings tab for more details
• Status - Has this item been confirmed. See Settings tab for more details
• Guest Numbers - These are the numbers that your customer has confirmed for these parts of the day. It requires manual input as these can vary throughout the day.
• Notes - These are operational notes for the item, which can be used for more in-depth detail. NB - Your customers can see these if you have made the item visible.
• Catering Options - If no catering, leave this section. If it is externally catered by a supplier, toggle externally catered to yes (this will add a Knife & Fork Icon to the item). If you are offering in-house catering for this itinerary item, check out this article first for how to add Food & drink, you can select the items/menu here and add them to the event. Once selected in the itinerary, the knife & fork icon will appear and the items selected will also be visible in the "Food & Drink" tab on the left hand side of the menu.

Once you have inputted all the information, select the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. This will then create the itinerary item, which you should now see in the itinerary. (if this doesn't happen instantly, you may need to refresh the page). Your itinerary item is now created, you can always edit/delete an item, or add more to build out the event itinerary.

To edit an itinerary item, click anywhere on the itinerary item box. This will open the itinerary item edit box.

You can also edit the time of an itinerary item by clicking the time on the left hand side of an item. once you have changed the time you can click enter on your keyboard or anywhere outside of the box. NB if you go to edit the time then leave it blank the start time will automatically set to 00:00 

Settings - What do they mean?

Settings are the term used for the key options when adding an itinerary item. These are:

• Visible - Internal vs All (This is KEY - as "Internal" means that only your team can see this itinerary item. If set to "All" this means that your customers/Hosts will be able to see this when they login to the platform).

• Editable - Locked vs Unlocked (This option is only available if you have selected "All" for visibility. Locked means that this is a "View-Only" item for your customer, which they cannot edit. Unlocked means that they will be able to edit all details of the item - name, time etc. And also be able to select food & drink options from the catering section - see here for more info). ADD LINK

• Status - Draft vs Confirmed (Draft means that this item will show with a draft symbol on the itinerary, which is a visual aid to help you plan items that need to be confirmed. Confirmed means the item will show normally. NB - if a customer edits an unlocked item, that was confirmed, it will always default back to draft until you confirm it. So a top tip, set everything as confirmed if you are allowing your customers to edit, as it will make it easier to see what they have changed.)

• Food & Drink - No vs yes. No means that no food & drink items or menus can be selected for the itinerary event by another venue user or customer. By setting food & drink to yes allows other venue users and customers to select food & drink menus/items to add to the itinerary item. You can also set an itinerary item to externally catered by switching the toggle to 'Yes'.

There is also a key consideration of an overall setting you can change at the itinerary. This is the option at the top of the itinerary page which is "Lock all itinerary items". If you select this option, all items will change from unlocked to locked - preventing your customer from editing any information from that point onwards. This can be useful for planning if you have cut off points for changes in your planning process.

NB - If you unlock all itinerary items, it will change the items back to their original settings (so if they are always locked, this will return to locked and not unlocked.

How to Edit/Delete Itinerary items

You are able to edit and delete itinerary items once you have created them on Hostology. To do this, simply click on the itinerary items box. This will then open the pop-up menu and allow you to change any of the details available when originally creating the item. Please note that these work dynamically in real time, so if you change visibility settings, this will then reflect on the customer login too.

To delete an itinerary item, simply click the 3 dots on the far right of the itinerary item box. This will then show the option to "Delete". Select this and the item will be removed from the itinerary. If there was any Food & drink attached, this will be removed from the event as well.

Please be aware, that you can edit and delete items that are imported from an itinerary template. Once you add an itinerary template to an event, it is no longer affected by the template, and you are free to edit/delete and make it bespoke to the event. Which is why they can be used as a really useful time-saving feature!

Itinerary Item Notes

There are two ways in which you can add and edit itinerary item notes. The first is by clicking the itinerary item box. This will open a tray on the right hand side of the screen allowing you to scroll down and add or edit your notes. 

Your notes will then be displayed underneath the itinerary item name.

The other way of quickly adding a note to an itinerary item is by using the note box which can be found just below the itinerary item title. 

You can edit or delete your note at any time by clicking the pencil button to edit the note or the bin icon to delete the note from the itinerary item.

Itinerary Operational Notes - What are they and how do I add one?

Separate to the notes within an itinerary item, you can also add notes that are for the overall itinerary. These are called itinerary notes and can be found at the top of your screen on the itinerary page. You can also click the top of the notes banner or the up/down arrow to expand or hide your itinerary notes.

Itinerary operational notes can be used to add notes for the itinerary that are not specific to a certain part of the day. For example it can be to note a "package" that your customer has requested, or general information that can be useful for everyone to know.

Please note, itinerary notes are internal only, so will not appear on the customer download or online view for your customers. So should be used for your own planning notes only. They will appear on the download for your venue though at the top.

Adding a template to the itinerary

As mentioned before, you can import an itinerary template into an event, to save time when getting started in the planning process. This can be done to add in multiple itinerary items that you always use in event (for example if you have a general running order of the day, or key items that happen at every event). Itinerary items are always editable when you add them to an event, so do not fear if you need to change the start time, make tweaks, or remove any items!

To import an itinerary template to an event, go to the itinerary section and then at the top of the page, select the "Choose from a template" option. 

Once you select this button, you will then be prompted to load a template from the list of templates you have created at the venue management level (see here for how to create templates) ADD LINK.

In this pop-up, it will tell you the event duration. Please note that to be able to add an itinerary template, the template duration will need to match this number.

Select the template you would like to upload to the event and then press the "Use this Template" button.

The template will now be added to the event and all itinerary items will appear. You can then edit or delete any items you wish to adjust for this specific event. You can also add multiple templates to the event if you wish to as well, or add a template twice if you would like to "double up". The option is yours to choose!

How do the days work?

An important concept to understand with the itinerary is how to best utilise the number of days in the itinerary. A consideration when you create an event is how long the duration of the event will be and also what happens when you edit the duration - check out this article for some more information on this.

Whatever you choose, the itinerary will reflect. So if you have a 1 day Event duration, the itinerary will be 1 day, 2 day duration, the itinerary will be 2 days.... etc.

It is also important to know that if you are importing an itinerary template to the event, this will only be possible if the template is the same duration as the event you are working on. So if you have created a 2 day event. But have only made a 1 day template. You will not be able to add this into the event. Check out this article for more information on creating templates.

Lastly, if you have an itinerary which is for multiple days, you will have an additional option to "Move Up" or "Move Down" the days. This option allows you to move the days around simply, if you have plans change to different days. This will switch the days round in position. See here for how this works:

Academy Video Guide

Next Steps

Check out how Food & Drink works at the event level

Check out how to add suppliers to events

Check out how to add accommodation to events

Check out how to add milestones & tasks to events

Check out how to add your customer to events.