Use 09
Meal plan and buffet wristbands
Meal entitlement is where all-inclusive complexity actually lives. A guest is on half board, has two dine-around dinners, one included à la carte visit and a child who eats free before six. Reception knows all of it and the host at the restaurant door knows none of it — which is what the band is there to fix.
Consumable entitlements are the hard part
A meal plan divides into two kinds of rule. Standing entitlements — breakfast is included every day — are trivial: the band says yes, every time. Consumable entitlements — two dine-around dinners per stay, one lobster night, a bottle of wine on arrival — must be decremented, and the decrement has to survive a family arriving at separate times, a table of six on three different plans, and a party that changes its mind at the door. Any system that cannot show a host what remains will be worked around within a week.
The host has ten seconds and a queue
The interaction happens standing up, at a lectern, with a line behind it. Whatever the band produces has to be readable at a glance: included, or not included, and how many remain. A screen requiring interpretation means the host waves people through at peak, which is exactly when the entitlement matters. The best implementations show three words and a number, and put anything more complicated behind a manager.
Children eat by age, and age is not on the band
Child meal pricing typically breaks at ages that a host cannot assess by looking — free under four, half price to eleven, adult from twelve. Guessing causes offence in both directions. The band should carry the bracket as a colour or a marker set at check-in from the booking, so the host never estimates a child's age in front of their parents. This is a small detail that generates a disproportionate share of complaints when it is missing.
What happens when the entitlement is already spent
A guest presents a band for their third dine-around when they had two. The system says no; the property still has to seat them or not. Decide in advance whether the host can sell the third at a set price, whether a manager can grant it, and what is recorded either way. Properties that leave this undefined get a de facto policy set by whichever host is on that evening, which produces two guests at neighbouring tables who paid different amounts for the same dinner.
What to tell us before we quote
- Standing entitlements versus consumable ones, listed separately
- What the host sees at the door, in words, at a glance
- Child age brackets and how they are set at check-in
- The rule for an entitlement that is already spent
- Whether a table can pool entitlements across bands
Compatibility is subject to confirmation of your lock system, credential technology and encoding requirements.
Specified for this
Bands that suit meal plan and buffet.
Listed in the order we would normally recommend them. The first is the usual answer; the others exist because properties are not identical.
Band 05
RFID fabric wristbands
Woven polyester with the artwork in the weave rather than on it. The stay-length band: comfortable enough to sleep in, locked enough not to move.
SpecificationBand 04
RFID silicone wristbands
The season-long RFID band. A sealed module moulded inside solid silicone, so there is no seam for water to find.
SpecificationBand 10
Recycled RFID wristbands
Woven from post-consumer PET yarn. Performs like standard polyester because it is standard polyester — with a documented feedstock.
SpecificationAlso on the property
Uses that usually share the same band.
No obligation · reply within one working day
Specify a meal-plan band system.
Runs start at 500. Describe the property and the volume, and we come back with a specification, a unit price and samples of the band we would recommend.