AI Booking Agent for Leisure Venues: 71% Booking Conversion
How SociiLabs helped ZapBook turn a single typed message into a confirmed venue booking in under 90 seconds, and reach private beta three months after kickoff.
Client · ZapBot · app.zapbook.ai
About the project
01 Project overview
Engagement
3 months from kickoff to private beta
Delivery team
Senior SociiLabs engineers with a delivery lead
Core technologies
LLM integration, ZapBook API, GoHighLevel API
ZapBook is the booking platform behind curling clubs, bowling centres and activity venues. ZapBot is its conversational booking agent.
SociiLabs joined at discovery, already working inside ZapBook as the team rebuilding its infrastructure. Three months after kickoff, ZapBot entered private beta on the live ZapBook platform. Venues in the beta take real bookings against live inventory.
In private beta, ZapBot converts 71% of booking conversations and takes a guest from first message to confirmed booking in under 90 seconds. Every booking syncs to the venue's GoHighLevel CRM with zero manual entries.
02 The challenge
Make booking as easy as sending a text, without giving up accuracy, pricing control or the venue's customer data.
01
Every form field is a decision point.
A standard booking flow asks the guest to pick a venue, a date, a time and a package, then fill in a form. Each step is a chance to leave. Venues wanted the guest to say what they want once and get a yes.
02
Guests don't speak in form fields.
"Curling for 8 on Friday after work" holds an activity, a party size, a day and a vague time. The agent had to turn loose language into a precise request, and ask one short follow-up question when something was missing.
03
Live inventory left no room for guessing.
Lanes, sheets and packages sell out in real time. The agent could only offer slots the ZapBook API confirmed were open, at the price the venue had set. It could never double-book or promise a discount.
04
Every booking had to reach the CRM.
Venues run their marketing in GoHighLevel. A booking taken in chat had to arrive there as a complete contact with the right tags, exactly as a form booking would. Nobody on the venue's team should ever have to type it in.
Why SociiLabs
One team that already knew the platform underneath.
ZapBook needed a partner who could put an AI agent on top of a live booking system without putting that system at risk. The language model was the smallest part of the job. Our scope also covered availability logic, pricing guardrails, CRM sync, staff handoff and the monitoring around them. Because SociiLabs was already rebuilding ZapBook's infrastructure, we built ZapBot on a platform we knew from the inside and shipped it through the same zero-downtime deploy pipeline.
What we built
03 Solution
The booking agent, and the production system underneath it. Guest conversations connect to live availability, pricing rules and the venue's CRM, with explicit rules for when staff take over.
Conversational Booking Agent
Guests book in chat, in plain language. ZapBot confirms the slot or offers the closest alternatives, and the booking is held and paid in ZapBook from the same conversation.
Intent Parsing
An LLM extraction layer pulls activity, date, time window, party size and special requests from one message. When a field is missing, it asks one targeted question instead of restarting.
Live Availability + Alternatives
Every offer comes from the ZapBook availability API at that moment. When a slot is full, ZapBot offers the nearest open times. The guest picks one in the same chat, so a full slot no longer ends the conversation.
Pricing Guardrails
Prices, packages and deposits come only from venue configuration. The model cannot quote a price, apply a discount or change a package outside those rules.
Staff Handoff
Group events over the venue's limit, complaints and refund requests pause the agent and route to staff with the full transcript attached.
GoHighLevel CRM Sync
Each confirmed booking creates or updates a GoHighLevel contact with activity, party size and visit tags. Venue staff make zero manual CRM entries.
Architecture
System diagram
INSIDE A LIVE MULTI-VENUE BOOKING PLATFORM
Autonomous where the booking is clear. Staff in the loop where it isn't.
ZapBot only books what the ZapBook API confirms is available, at the price the venue configured. Idempotent booking requests prevent duplicate reservations when a guest repeats a message or a network call retries. Large groups, complaints, refunds and any request to speak to a person pause the agent and hand the conversation to staff with the transcript attached. Per-venue message limits and failure alerts keep operations controlled, and every test runs against a sandbox venue, never live inventory. Guest contact details are kept in ZapBook and GoHighLevel, the venue's own systems of record.
Delivery timeline
Three months from kickoff to private beta. Then 71% booking conversion.
Discovery started on a platform we already knew from the ZapBook infrastructure rebuild. Private beta opened on the live ZapBook platform three months after kickoff. ZapBot remains in private beta, booking against live venue inventory.
WEEK 1
Discovery & Architecture
Define intents, guardrails and the CRM data contract.
MONTHS 1–3
Intent + Live Availability
Plain-language requests matched to open ZapBook slots and venue pricing.
MONTHS 1–3
Alternatives Engine
Nearest-slot offers when a requested time is full.
MONTH 3
Private Beta
On the live ZapBook platform, with GoHighLevel CRM sync.
IN BETA
71% Booking Conversion
Under 90 seconds from first message to confirmed booking.
HOW IT STAYED ACCURATE
Every booking is checked against the source.
INVENTORY CORRECTNESS
The API is the only source of truth.
ZapBot never answers availability from memory. Each offer is a live API call, and each booking is written with an idempotency key. A booking only counts as confirmed once ZapBook returns it.
GUEST PROTECTION
Handoff is part of the conversation design.
The agent recognises complaints, refunds, large groups and requests for a person, and stops there. Staff receive the full transcript and the parsed booking details. No guest is left talking to a bot that can't help.
CONTINUOUS EVALUATION
Every conversation can be replayed.
ZapBot follows our standard for AI in production, with evals before release, Langfuse tracing in production and fallbacks for rate limits and outages. Changes to prompts or code are tested against replayed, anonymised guest messages. A failed extraction blocks the release until it is fixed.
SENIOR REVIEW BEFORE EVERY MERGE
Every PR
SOURCE OF TRUTH FOR AVAILABILITY AND PRICE
1
MANUAL CRM ENTRIES FOR VENUE STAFF
0
04 Impact & results
Impact & Results
Guests book in one conversation. Bookings confirm in under 90 seconds. Every booking reaches the CRM.
- Private beta on the live ZapBook platform, booking against real venue inventory at the price each venue set.
- 71% booking conversion in private beta. Guests say what they want once, and ZapBot turns it into a confirmed booking.
- Under 90 seconds from a guest's first message to a confirmed booking, including the live availability check against ZapBook.
- Staff handle the exceptions, with full context. Large groups, complaints and refund requests route to the venue team with the transcript attached. Figures on this page come from ZapBot's private beta; we'll update them as more venues come on.
- 3 months from kickoff to private beta, built and tested against a sandbox venue before any guest saw it.
- Zero manual CRM entries. Every confirmed booking creates or updates a GoHighLevel contact, and a full slot turns into an offer of the nearest open times instead of a lost guest.
Booking conversion in private beta
71%
First message to confirmed booking
< 90 s
Kickoff to private beta
3 mo
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