Shops Overview
LIKE MAGIC lets a property sell to guests directly inside the guest journey through a family of self-service shops. A guest browses a product list on their own device, adds items to a cart, and pays. No front-desk interaction required. This is ancillary retail: snacks and drinks from an honesty shelf, items from a context-aware shop, or minibar consumption declared at checkout.
This article explains the shop family as a whole, how the product catalogs are authored, and what has to be in place for a shop to appear for a property. It is written for the operator/administrator who configures shops, not for guests.
ℹ️ Note: "Shop & Commerce" is ancillary retail and is separate from upsell. An upsell is a room-category upgrade offered during check-in and on the reservation, and it stays with the booking and reservation flows. If you are looking to configure room upgrades, that is not a shop.
1. Who Can Use This
Shops are a guest-facing part of the guest journey, but everything you touch to run them lives in the content management (Prismic) layer: the catalog. Each shop is enabled per property by LIKE MAGIC (section 5); authoring the catalog requires access to your property's Prismic repository.
2. The Shop Family
All shops share the same shape (a CMS-authored product list, a cart, a payment step, and a confirmation), but each is a distinct capability enabled separately per property. The three covered here are the catalog-driven shops most properties use:
| Shop | What the guest does | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Honesty shop | Browses a self-service "honesty" product list, adds items to a cart, and pays. | In My Stay, as a dedicated shop page and cart. |
| Dynamic shop | Browses a context- or device-driven shop, reviews the charges on their folio, pays, and gets a confirmation. | In My Stay, as a dynamic shop route with its own folio overview, payment, and confirmation. |
| Checkout minibar | Declares minibar consumption as part of the departure/checkout flow. | In the checkout flow, on the minibar step before the folio overview. |
ℹ️ Note: The checkout minibar is not a standalone shop the guest opens on its own. It is the minibar declaration step inside the departure/checkout flow, and it reuses the dynamic-shop cart behind the scenes. It appears only when the checkout flow is available for the property.
Two further device-bound siblings exist in the same family: a box rental / box shop on a physical box or locker device, and a self-pouring beverage station. Each is enabled separately per property. They follow the same catalog-and-cart pattern but are tied to a physical device; they are documented separately.
3. How a Shop Is Authored (Prismic Catalogs)
Every shop's product list is content, not code. The items a guest sees (names, descriptions, prices, images, and translations) are authored per property in Prismic, the platform's headless CMS. The application reads the catalog for the relevant shop type and renders whatever the property has published.
Because the catalog is CMS-authored:
- You change the assortment without a release. Add, remove, reprice, or re-translate items in Prismic and the change flows to the guest app.
- An empty catalog means an empty shop. Switching a shop on does not give it anything to sell. The items you publish to its Prismic catalog are what guests can buy.
- Translations live with the item. Each shop type carries its own translated catalog, so a guest sees prices and copy in their language.
For how Prismic content is structured and published, see the Content Management with Prismic documentation.
4. How a Guest Uses a Shop
From the guest's side the flow is consistent across the family, and knowing it helps you support guests:
- The guest opens the shop from My Stay (or reaches the minibar step during checkout).
- They browse the catalog and add items to a cart.
- They review the charges and the total to be paid.
- They pay using the property's configured payment provider.
- They receive a confirmation.
Payments run through the property's payment configuration, so shop charges use the same provider and VAT presentation as the rest of the guest journey. See Payment Configuration.
5. Making a Shop Appear
A shop appears in My Stay only when these things are in place. When a shop is missing for a property, check them in this order:
- The shop is enabled for the property. Each shop (honesty shop, dynamic shop, checkout minibar, box shop, self-pouring station) is enabled separately per property by LIKE MAGIC; switching on one does not switch on another. If a shop you expect is missing, request its activation via a Support Ticket.
- The shop has a catalog. An enabled shop with an empty Prismic catalog shows guests an empty page. See section 3.
- The guest is not outside the shop's guest segments. A shop can be limited to, or excluded for, guest segments. Where that is set, a guest outside the segments is offered nothing from the shop, so the shop is missing for that guest while another guest of the same property sees it. The segment lists of a shop are set by LIKE MAGIC, so request a change via a Support Ticket.
ℹ️ A shop missing for one guest and present for the next points at the segments (point 3). A shop missing for every guest of the property points at the activation or the catalog (points 1 and 2).
6. Conclusion
The LIKE MAGIC shops turn the guest journey into a sales channel: an honesty shelf, a context-aware dynamic shop, and a checkout minibar, each driven by a Prismic catalog you author per property. To offer one, have LIKE MAGIC enable it for the property and give it a catalog to sell. To enable and configure the honesty shop specifically, see Honesty Shop.