Change your restaurant name and booking domain
In this article
A rebrand touches more than your sign. This guide walks through the two settings that carry your identity in Resos, the restaurant name and the booking domain, what updates itself once you change them, and the short list of things you have to go and touch yourself.
Both settings are self-service. You do not need to contact us to rename a venue or move its booking link.
Change the name your guests see
Go to Menu → Settings & add-ons → Account → Name & contact and edit the Restaurant name field. This is the name guests see, so it is the one that shows on your booking page and in the messages your guests receive.
Just below it sits Legal name of business. That is the registered name of the company that owns the restaurant, and it is used for billing and invoicing. A rebrand often changes only the trading name, so change the legal name only if the company name really changed. If it did, check your VAT number in the same place while you are there.
Save, and the new name is live everywhere Resos reads it: your booking page, your booking confirmation and reminder emails, and your Reserve with Facebook & Instagram listing, which Resos updates for you whenever your profile changes.
Bookings made before the rename keep the old name on them. Resos stamps the restaurant name onto each booking when it is created, so your history stays a true record of what the venue was called at the time. Every booking taken from now on carries the new name.
The one name that does not follow along
Your SMS sender name is a separate setting, because a mobile network limits it to between 3 and 11 characters. Update it yourself under Menu → Settings & add-ons → Communication → SMS messages → SMS sender name. If you leave it blank, guests see “Restaurant” instead of your new brand.
Change your booking domain
Your booking page lives on a Resos subdomain, so your booking link looks like https://yourrestaurant.resos.com/booking. Renaming the venue does not move that link on its own. To change it, go to Menu → Settings & add-ons → General → Link & widget and edit the Subdomain field under Domain.
A few rules apply:
- Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Spaces are not allowed, so write your restaurant name without spaces or with a hyphen where a space would be.
- It has to be between 2 and 50 characters.
- It has to be free. If another restaurant already uses it, if an old booking link somewhere already points away from it, or if it is one of a handful of names Resos keeps for itself such as
wwworapp, Resos tells you and asks for a different one.
Your old link keeps working
This is the part most people worry about, and the answer is reassuring: when you change your domain, Resos sets up a redirect from the old one to the new one automatically. A guest who clicks a link you posted last year still lands on your booking page. Rename twice and the redirects update, so even the very first link still arrives in the right place.
Booking status links and feedback links your guests already received are handled the same way.
Re-copy your website widget
Your widget snippet has your old domain written into it. The widget still loads, because the redirect catches it too, but it takes an extra hop each time the widget opens.
Tidy it up when you get a chance: go back to Menu → Settings & add-ons → General → Link & widget, copy the widget code again, and replace the old snippet on your website. Do the same for the plain Booking link if you hardcoded it into a button or a menu. See how to add the booking widget to your website for where the code goes.
What to check on your other channels
| Channel | What to do |
|---|---|
| Your website | Re-copy the widget code and any hardcoded booking link |
| Reserve with Google | Rename in both places. The booking button keeps working after a rename, because Resos identifies your restaurant to Google by an internal id rather than by its name. The name on the listing is yours to edit in your Google Business Profile. See the Reserve with Google FAQ |
| Reserve with Facebook & Instagram | Nothing. Resos syncs your new name to the listing when you save it |
| Social media and newsletters | Update any booking link you pasted into a bio, a post, or an email template. The old one redirects, but the new one is the one you want people to see and share |
| Google Business Profile, review sites, listings | Update the venue name and booking link with each provider directly |
Take your guest list with you
A rebrand is usually the moment you want to tell your regulars. You already have their details: go to Menu → Settings & add-ons → Advanced → Export data, choose Customers, and download the CSV. Full instructions, including the fields you get and how to split a large export, are in how to export data from Resos.
Exported files hold personal guest information, so store and share them carefully, and only send marketing to guests who agreed to receive it.
If you ask us to change it for you
If you would rather we made the change, we can, but the request has to come from an email address that is on the account. If it arrives from any other address, we will ask you to resend it from the right one before we touch anything. That is not us being difficult: a booking domain and a venue name are exactly what someone would want to hijack, and the email check is what stops them.
Adding the new owner or manager as a user first is often the quicker route. See New to Resos for how users and invitations work.
Rebranding and not sure what else to check? Write to us at hi@resos.com and we will walk through your setup with you.
