Prospero’s Booking Portals help your organization streamline space and inventory reservations — reducing emails, minimizing scheduling conflicts, and keeping your calendar up to date with real-time requests.
Whether you’re a theatre, arts center, or performance venue, Booking Portals empower external users to request spaces without ever leaving your branded portal — while you stay in full control of what’s visible and when.
ℹ️ New to booking portals? Check out our blog post Introducing Booking Portals for a full overview of how they work and best practices
What is a Booking Portal?
A Booking Portal is a customizable, public-facing calendar that external users can use to request spaces, rooms, and even inventory. As soon as a request is submitted, it’s automatically added to your master calendar as a booking (but not a confirmed event), letting your team view potential bookings in context and make efficient, informed decisions.
How to Create a Booking Portal
To get started:
Navigate to the Booking Portals tab in the sidebar.
Click + Booking Portal in the top right.
There are 5 tabs in the portal editor to manage your portal's appearance and functionality:
You can preview the landing page, booking calendar view, space page format, and booking form at any time in the portal preview on the right of the editor.
🛠️ Configuration
Set up your portal in the Configuration tab. Add your branding, choose which spaces are available to book, and set your portal live.
Set a portal name and description (displayed at the top of the booking page, preview on the right).
Customize the URL for easy sharing.
Assign an admin to manage and receive notifications for incoming requests.
Set visibility:
Public (accessible to anyone with the link)
Password-protected (for restricted access)
Add your logo, banner, and brand colors.
Add the spaces available to reserve.
You can also decide whether users can request spaces and inventory items even if the resource is already in use.
If you want to allow customers to book multiple spaces on a single reservation, select the option for bookings to include multiple spaces under Multi-Location Bookings.
ℹ️ About the Portal
In the About tab you can write a description to appear at the top of your portal's landing page to provide an overview for bookers. Include any important information about the portal or your organization's reservation process.
This is a full rich-text field - add links, headers, lists, or any other formatting you need.
📅 Calendar Appearance
Use the Calendar tab to customize the calendar's appearance for bookers.
Color-code the calendar by a chosen resource, such as venue, project, or space. Choose which resources will show in the calendar legend if displayed. Events with unselected resources will be displayed in gray.
Set whether currently booked events in the selected spaces show their full title or simply "booked".
Display pending events as “requested” if you’d prefer to keep event names private.
📋 Booking Form
Each portal has a highly customizable booking form to collect the info you need for reservations.
Add a custom description of the form.
Add and reorder custom fields to collect information about the booker. Give each field a name and description, and opt to make the field required or optional for bookers by toggling the question mark on the new field. There are five different field types available:
Single-line text
Multi-line text
Email
Phone
Checkmark
Customize fields in the Event section to collect info about the event.
Add a description for this section of the form.
Toggle specialty fields for the booker to add Tags, Projects, Inventory items, or Consumables to their booking. You can then choose which of each resource will be available for bookers to select.
Inventory options can include all items org-wide or limited to the items available in a specific space or venue.
Include terms & conditions for users to accept before booking submission.
Select whether or not to include a field for bookers to leave a note to the admin for any other specific information.
Preview your form live as you make changes on the right of the editor.
🚪 Spaces
In the Spaces tab, you can:
Set each space's available times for each day of the week.
Choose whether to display an address.
Add a detailed description of the space.
💡 To mark a whole day as unavailable, set both start and end time to 12pm.
Setting your Portal Live
When you're ready:
Set the portal's status to Live in the Configuration tab.
Copy the portal link and share it, or embed it in your website with an
iframe.Bookers will now be able to request spaces, see availability, and receive confirmation emails automatically when they make a request.
📥 Managing Incoming Requests
All incoming booking requests can be found in the Bookings tab in the Calendar sidebar.
From here, you can:
See all submitted requests from all active portals, organized by portal and then by request date.
Use the 3-dots menu to view the request in context on the calendar or quickly approve or deny the booking.
When you approve or modify a booking, the booker is automatically notified via email with any changes made.
👀 Previewing the Portal
To see what your portal looks like:
Set your portal live.
Copy the live portal URL into your browser.
📎 Additional Notes
Pending bookings are visible on the admin calendar, but they are not yet events. They will not appear in view links or synced calendar and require approval from an admin before they "graduate" to full events that link into other calendar features.
Bookers can add key details during submission, including items, tags, and projects—shifting more of the administrative setup to the booker and saving time for your team.
Each portal has its own set of instructions and available resources, helping bookers understand what information is required before submitting.
Create separate portals for internal vs external requests to simplify processing and permissions.
🙋 Have more questions?
For bookers: Check out our separate tutorial on Using Booking Portals to Request Events.
For questions or suggestions, contact our support team or drop us a note directly in the app.