Free Booking Tools for Wineries

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Were building Door Explorer to connect Wine Lovers with great Cellar Doors. Our mission is to make exploring wine regions simple, helping people easily find and taste wines they love — and importantly, ensuring they have a memorable tasting experience at the Cellar Door.

To achieve this, we're creating tools designed for Cellar Door managers to digitise their operations, simplify booking processes, and foster stronger relationships with guests. By gaining insights into guest preferences, you can customise tastings to suit each visitor, boosting the likelihood of guests finding (and buying) wines they love.

Ultimately, its about creating a win-win situation for both Wine Lovers and Cellar Doors.

Co-founders, George and James — two mates with a shared passion for wine tasting and exploring wine regions — have turned their hobby into something bigger.

We come from tech and startup backgrounds, each of us with over ten years of experience in creating and growing websites and apps for some of Australia's leading tech companies.

Door Explorer started as our way to keep track of the wineries we'd visited and to recommend our favourite Cellar Doors to friends. Now, we're dedicated to developing tools that help Cellar Door managers offer a better wine-tasting experience for all. By blending our tech skills with our enthusiasm for wine, we're tackling the challenges faced by both wine lovers and Cellar Door Managers.

You can read more about us, or feel free to book a call to chat with us directly.

We make a small amount of money each time Door Explorer is responsible for a Guest booking a pre-paid tasting experience. This is what we call a Referred Booking, with a Referral Fee of just $1 per guest. More details on this are available in the next section.

Transparently, Door Explorer is in the early stages and our revenue is minimal. Were building this platform ourselves, and don't have an expensive development team to pay, which allows us to keep our services low-cost or free.

Our billing approach is simple: we charge only when we provide real value. Were looking to introduce premium sales and marketing tools designed specifically for Cellar Doors to boost your business and wine sales. While these tools are still in development, we're eager for your input on what features will genuinely benefit your operations.

For now, we're not selling anything, we just want you to use the free tools we've built to help run your cellar door.

With Door Explorer, what you see is what you get—no hidden fees, no surprises. We believe our $1 per guest referral fee offers great value, and we're here to help you understand exactly how it benefits you. Got questions? A quick call can clear them up.

At Door Explorer, we classify bookings into 2 categories.

Direct Bookings:
Guests book these directly with you — whether through your website, over the phone, or via email. You might already manage these bookings using a calendar, diary, or a generic booking tool not specifically designed for wineries.

We've developed a specialised tool tailored for wineries, equipped with everything you need to efficiently manage your bookings and Cellar Door operations. And we're offering it to you for free, with a commitment to remain free.

Referral Bookings:
We built doorexplorer.com to spotlight fantastic Cellar Doors, helping people explore new wine regions or find hidden gems within familiar ones.

When someone books and pre-pays for a tasting at your Cellar Door after discovering you on our site, that's what we call a Referred Booking. For these, we keep a $1 per guest referral fee from the tasting charge. Think of it as a cost-effective marketing investment—where else can you gain a new pre-paid booking for as little as $4 for four guests?

We think its a great deal for everyone involved:

• Guest: discovers a new favourite Cellar Door, with wine & tasting experiences they're excited for.
• Cellar Door: welcomes a new group of customers, complete with a prepaid tasting fee that enhances cash flow and minimises no-shows. These are guests who likely wouldn't have discovered you without our platform.
• Door Explorer: is rewarded only when we successfully connect your Cellar Door with new guests, ensuring our success is directly tied to yours.

If you have any questions or need clarification, please don't hesitate to book a call with us. We're here to walk you through it.

Payments are securely handled through Stripe. When you set up your Cellar Door listing, you'll have the option to activate payments for your tasting experiences. This step requires approval from your business directors via Stripe Connect, but don't worry—its straightforward, and we're here to help guide you through the process, whether through the Door Explorer dashboard or over a call.

Once you're approved, you'll be all set to receive payments for tasting fees directly.

Stripe, like all payment processors, charges a fee for transactions (usually between 2-3% + a per transaction fee of $0.30). To ensure these fees don't impact your revenue (or ours), we add them to the guests payment at the time of booking.

As outlined earlier, Direct Bookings come without additional fees from us—you'll get the entire tasting fee. For Referred Bookings made through Door Explorer, we deduct a $1 per guest referral fee.

Lets break down what this looks like with a standard $10 tasting for a group of four guests.

Managing refunds and cancellations is a critical aspect of offering a seamless booking experience. When you enable payments for your tasting experiences through Door Explorer, part of the setup includes selecting a cancellation policy. We provide three options to ensure consistency across the platform while also aligning with your business practices and setting clear expectations for guests.

• Flexible: The most flexible option, allowing guests to cancel at any time before their booking and receive a full refund. Ideal for prioritising guest convenience and safeguarding your brand reputation.
• Standard: Requires guests to give at least 48 hours notice for a cancellation to be eligible for a refund. This middle ground offers a balance between flexibility for guests and predictability for your operations.
• Strict: Designed for those who need greater certainty on bookings, this policy asks for a minimum of 7 days notice for cancellations to qualify for a refund.

Selecting the right cancellation policy allows you to manage your booking slots efficiently while making your refund and cancellation terms clear to guests upfront, minimising surprises and ensuring a smoother experience for both parties.

You have the flexibility to update your cancellation policy whenever you need to. Any changes you make will apply to new bookings moving forward; however, these adjustments wont affect bookings already made or currently in place.