What are some potential pitfalls when designing a PHP program for managing reservations, like in the scenario described in the forum thread?

One potential pitfall when designing a PHP program for managing reservations is not properly validating user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in database queries.

// Sanitize and validate user input before using it in a database query
$reservation_date = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['reservation_date']);
$reservation_time = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['reservation_time']);
```
Another potential pitfall is not handling errors properly, which can result in unexpected behavior or crashes. To address this, always use try-catch blocks to catch and handle any potential errors that may occur during the execution of the program.

```php
// Use try-catch blocks to catch and handle errors
try {
    // Code that may cause errors
} catch (Exception $e) {
    // Handle the error
    echo "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
}