Guest guide

You are a guest: someone booking a table at a venue that runs on DineGlobe. You never need an account for any of this — you book on the venue’s own public page, you get a confirmation code, and a private emailed link lets you view, reconfirm or cancel your own booking afterwards. Everything in this guide is live at dineglobe.com today; the one-click live demo also has a “Book as a guest” card that walks the real booking flow.

Finding a venue

Open the landing page and scroll to “Pilot venues”, or open a venue’s page directly at /{slug} (for example /dineglobe-demo). A venue page shows the venue name, its city and country with the venue’s time zone, a short description, an “About” section and — when the venue published one — a “Good to know” summary of its booking terms. The Book a table button only appears when the venue actually has an active service you can book; venues without one say so instead of showing a dead button. Draft, unpublished and unknown venues all answer the same plain 404 — there is no way to probe whether an address exists.

The booking flow

Booking happens at /{slug}/book in two steps:

1. Search. Pick a service, a party size (1–200) and a date — the date picker starts at today in the venue’s own time zone. Press Find a table.
2. Choose and book. Pick one of the offered times, fill in your name and email (phone and a note to the venue are optional, the note is limited to 1000 characters) and press Book this table.

Every miss is stated honestly rather than guessed around:

• “That service is not available — choose another service.”
• “That date is past the venue’s booking window.”
• “The venue is closed on that date.”
• “No times are bookable on that date for that party.”
• “Booking terms are not published for this service yet — please contact the venue.”

Times that fall inside the venue’s booking-notice window are shown but disabled with the suffix “too soon — call us”; online booking can never skip the notice rule. When every remaining time that day is too soon you see: “Every remaining time today is inside the venue’s booking notice window. Please choose another day or call the venue.”

A double click cannot double-book you: the form carries a one-time request key, so a repeated submit returns the same booking, never two.

During the pilot, services that require a deposit refuse politely: “This service requires a deposit, which is not available online yet. Please book by phone.” Paid bookings are switched off by the platform’s capability gates — see What works today.

Your confirmation code

A completed booking shows a large code in the shape DG-XXXXXXXX plus the venue-local date, time and time zone and your party size. The screen says exactly what to do with it: “Show this code at the venue. Changing or cancelling from this screen is not available in the pilot yet — contact the venue, which can find your booking instantly with this code.”

A confirmation email is composed for every booking, but during the pilot no email actually leaves the system — sending jobs fail visibly as dead letters because no provider is configured. Your booking is still real and the venue can see it immediately; treat the on-screen code as your confirmation. See Messages, confirmations & reminders for what the venue sends and what currently arrives.

Request-mode bookings

Some services take bookings as requests. You will see “Request sent — the venue will confirm by email”, and your booking sits in the REQUESTED state until a manager at the venue approves or declines it. Two deadlines apply and the earlier one wins: the venue must decide within 24 hours, or before the service starts. A decline carries the venue’s reason, and an expired request emails you that the slot went. Request bookings are covered in depth in Request-approval bookings.

Managing your booking from your link

You never sign in anywhere. Instead, the venue can email you a private management link, or you can request one yourself: open /b, the guest portal, and use “Lost your link?” — enter the email you booked with and your DG- confirmation code. The answer is always the same non-committal line (“If that email and code match a booking, a fresh link is on its way.”) so nobody can discover which bookings exist.

The link works like this:

• It is valid for 24 hours and works once on one device. Opening it exchanges it for a 60-minute private session scoped to that single booking.
• You can ask for a fresh link up to 5 times per hour per email address. Every fresh link invalidates all earlier ones immediately.
• The page shows your status — “Waiting for the venue to confirm”, “Confirmed”, “Cancelled”, “Marked as a no-show”, “Declined by the venue” or “Expired” — plus the when, party size, name and a “Add to your calendar (.ics)” download.
• If the venue asked you to reconfirm, a Please reconfirm panel appears with a “Yes, I am coming” button.
• If the booking is confirmed or still requested, a Cancel this booking panel appears. Cancellation is quoted against the terms you accepted at booking time: “Free cancellation” or “Late-cancellation terms apply”. The outcome says which: “Booking DG-XXXX cancelled (no charge).” or “… (late terms applied).”

Anything wrong with the link answers one way: “This link is no longer valid — request a fresh one by email.” Used, expired, replaced and unknown links are deliberately indistinguishable. Details live in Guest self-service links and Changing & cancelling.

The waitlist

For a full restaurant you can go on the venue’s same-day waitlist. Joining happens with the venue (there is no public self-join web page in this pilot); you then receive a queue link by email. The position quote is an estimate and is labelled as one — “position 3 (2 ahead), quoted ~30 min (approx)” — never a promise. When a table frees up, the venue offers it to you with a 5-minute hold: “Please confirm within 5 minutes — the offer expires at …”. Accept through your queue link and the held table becomes your booking; miss the window and the table is released while your queue place keeps its original position. See Waitlist.

What you cannot do

• No self-service changes. There is no way to reschedule, or to edit date, time, party size or name. The portal offers exactly two actions: reconfirm and cancel. To change a booking, contact the venue with your code.
• No access to any other booking. Your link is scoped to one reservation; a foreign booking id answers the same 404.
• No venue-internal data. Staff notes, tags, table assignments and payment receipts never reach the guest portal.
• No account, no password, no profile. An email match alone never links you to a booking — only possession of the emailed link does.
• Nothing offline. If your connection drops, nothing you submitted was recorded and nothing is queued for later; see Offline & installable app.

How refusals look

Because you have no staff role, every staff-only command refuses you with PERMISSION_DENIED — but you will simply never see those controls. The denials you can actually meet are the honest 404 for unknown or unpublished venues, the one-message dead-link screen, and the deposit refusal above. Times are always shown in the venue’s time zone and money always in the venue’s currency — see Languages, time zones & money.