Across both residential and commercial real estate, shared facilities have become a part of everyday expectations. Apartment buildings are adding cinema rooms, guest suites, and gyms. Shopping centres have pop-up event areas and multi-purpose rooms that retailers can book for campaigns, staff training, or seasonal activations. Operators are recognising that with shared spaces and services, they can do more than just meet modern tenant expectations. They can generate revenue.
With Chainels, it is now possible to turn your services and shared spaces into paid bookings that can be managed directly in the platform.
Why Paid Bookings?
Services are becoming central to the way people experience real estate. Tenants expect simple and transparent access to the spaces and amenities around them, and they are willing to pay for quality and convenience.
The challenge is that many operators already have great spaces or services that could be offered as paid bookables, but the manual work and administrative costs make it impractical. With Chainels and Stripe, operators can finally monetise these services efficiently without adding complexity or overhead. Paid Bookings makes it easy to turn existing amenities into new revenue streams while keeping the tenant experience seamless from discovery to payment.
By charging for bookings, operators can:
Collect Payments with Stripe
Paid Bookings connects directly with Stripe, making payments simple and secure. The flow is designed to be intuitive, guiding tenants from discovering what is available to reserving it and completing the payment in one seamless experience. Chainels supports multiple currencies, allowing you to set prices that match your local market. This applies to every type of bookable space or service, whether it is a guest room, a vacuum cleaner or a cleaning service. All payments are processed through Stripe, where they can be reviewed and refunded when needed.
Flexible Pricing Rules
Pricing does not need to be one size fits all. Different spaces carry different patterns of demand, and pricing should adapt to those rhythms. Meeting rooms are often busiest on Tuesdays and Thursdays when hybrid workers come into the office, while cinema rooms tend to attract more tenants on Friday and Saturday nights but stay quiet on a Monday afternoon. With configurable rules in Chainels, these variations can be built directly into the booking process. Each rule can be set by date, day of the week, time of day, or interval, with default pricing applied when no rule matches. This flexibility ensures that every space is priced in a way that feels fair to tenants while also maximising the value of the building for operators.
Transparent Policies and Pricing
Tenants see exactly what they are paying for. Policies must be accepted by the tenant before payment, with the option to expand for more details. Pricing breakdowns are shown throughout the flow, from slot selection to confirmation, making the process clear at every step.
Smarter Booking Management
Tenants can track every step of a booking directly in the app. A status shows whether it is waiting for approval, confirmed, or cancelled, and the payment status moves with it. A rooftop terrace reserved for a private dinner might first appear as waiting for approval, then switch to confirmed with payment marked as complete. If the booking is cancelled, the payment status automatically updates to refunded.
Managers see the same flow in their view. Requests, approvals, and refunds are tied together, making it straightforward to follow what has happened. If a fitness class is cancelled after payment, the refund is processed in Stripe and logged in the system, with the option to leave a note for tenants. Bookings and payments stay connected on both sides from start to finish.
Keep Tenants on Track with Calendar Invites
A booking is harder to miss when it is already in the calendar. Every confirmed reservation sends an invite straight to a tenant’s inbox, complete with all the details. It is simple to save, easy to follow, and helps cut down on no-shows.
Clearer Communication Around Cancellations
Cancellations can be a source of frustration if the reason is not clear. By showing tenants why a booking was cancelled, there is less room for misunderstanding and more trust in the process. For community managers, being able to leave detailed notes provides a simple way to explain decisions, share context, or outline next steps. It turns what could be a point of friction into a moment of clarity.
Make Your Spaces Work For You
Paid Bookings opens up a new way to bring value into your building. Spaces that already exist can generate income, and new services can be introduced with the same simplicity. The question is no longer whether your spaces can generate income. The question is when you will enable it.