How an AI host confirms availability without double-booking.
Before Amira tells a guest the table is theirs, she has checked it against your floor and saved it to your book. Here's how that works, and where your team comes in.
What Amira checks before she offers a time.
These are the rules your floor is set up with. Amira can't book around them.
A table that fits the party
Every table has a size. A party of five needs a table for at least five, and Amira takes the smallest free one, so the big tables stay open for big groups.
Your dining time
You set how long a table is held, two hours for example. A table booked at seven isn't offered to anyone else until nine.
The times you seat
Guests can book only the start times you set. Ask for a time outside them and Amira offers the free times instead. Times that have already passed are never offered.
Your private room
A party big enough for the private room is booked into it, one event at a time.
How far ahead
Bookings are taken up to six months ahead, counted from today in Dubai.
When the time asked for is full.
Amira doesn't guess. The same check that finds 8pm full returns the times that are free, and she offers the closest ones.
She can't offer a time the check didn't return as free.
She can't tell a guest a time is taken when the check says it's free.
The booking is saved before she says “booked”.
A spoken confirmation is only worth something if the book agrees with it.
Written first
The booking goes into your book before anything is said. Only a saved booking comes back to Amira as confirmed.
A check on what she says
Before Amira speaks, a guard checks her reply for booking claims. A “you're booked” with no saved booking from this call is replaced before the guest hears it.
Read back from the record
The confirmation is read from the saved booking itself: “Your table for two is confirmed for Friday at nine in the evening, under Sara.”
When the outcome is unclear
If a save can't be verified, Amira tells the guest she can't confirm it went through.
When two guests want the last table at once.
Checking and saving happen as one locked step. While one booking is being written, no other booking can be written at the same moment.
The second guest is checked again
Their request is re-checked after the first booking is saved. It finds the table taken and gets the free times instead.
Nothing is held mid-call
A table is only taken when the booking is saved. A guest who hangs up halfway leaves it free.
No duplicate bookings
If the same request arrives twice, the guest gets the booking that already exists. A guest who already has a table that day isn't given a second one.
Your team can always overrule the book.
Amira follows the rules. Your team decides the exceptions.
Edit any booking
Hosts move bookings, change party sizes and switch tables in the host workspace.
Clashes are shown first
If a change clashes with another booking, the free times appear. Your team can still save it anyway, and that choice is recorded.
No silent overwrites
If someone else changed the booking a moment earlier, your edit stops and you see their version first.
Every change in the history
Each booking keeps a record of who changed what: Amira, a member of your team or another system.
Asked about availability.
Can an AI host double-book a table?
It can if it confirms from an out-of-date copy of your book, or says “booked” before the booking is saved. Onla checks and saves in one locked step, and Amira confirms only a booking that has been saved.
Does Amira hold a table while the guest decides?
No. There are no informal holds, waiting lists or provisional bookings. A table is taken when the booking is saved, and not before.
Does Amira know about bookings we take ourselves?
She sees every booking in Onla's book: hers, your team's edits and bookings passed in from a connected system. Bookings taken another way have to reach the same book, and how they get there is agreed during setup.
What happens when a guest moves their booking?
Amira moves it in one step. If the new time is full, the original booking stays and she offers the free times.
Can my team overbook on purpose?
Yes, from the host workspace. The clash is shown first, and saving anyway is recorded in the booking's history.
Does Onla work with our reservation system?
How Onla fits alongside it is agreed during setup, before any real call. Amira books into Onla's book, and bookings can pass to and from your other systems through automation tools such as Zapier, Make or n8n. A booking from another system that clashes becomes a request for your team, not a silent double booking.