If you prefer to manually review and approve or decline all booking inquiries and want to find out more about the scenarios for different setups, take a look at the use cases. This article will explain how the booking process works with booking inquiries, depending on your configured payment methods and the setting you have configured.
💡 Note: If you are connected to an OTA such as Booking.com or Airbnb, the bookability settings set in Lodgify will only apply to your website and will not affect the one selected for your OTA.
🔎 Case: You only want to receive inquiries and then manually create a quote with a booking and cancellation policy. Then send the guest a message containing the quote, policy, and payment instructions for the case that they accept.
🔧 Setup: Set the Bookability Setting to Inquiry Only. Configure any type of payments in your Payment Settings.
💡 Note: If you only accept inquiries, there is no need to configure the credit card verification in your credit card payment settings, as this functionality only works for instant bookings and booking requests.
➡ Booking Process: This is how the process will work for you and your guest.
- On the last page of the checkout, no payment method or details are requested.
- A booking with the status Open and a quote without status or policy are generated. Both, you and the guest receive an inquiry submission notification.
💡 Note: Your calendar is not yet blocked. - To accept the inquiry, click on the three dots in the quote box and select one of the following:
If you... then... Edit prices you can edit the prices of the existing quote that was shown to the guest and add a policy to it. Add a policy you decide to leave the quote as it was presented to the guest and only add a booking and cancellation policy to it. Add a new Quote you can create an entirely new quote with different dates or a different rental and add a booking and cancellation policy to it. For example, if the client wants to get a price for the week after. - Once you have created the quote with the policy, click on the Quote status, and select Send Quote.
- A messaging slider will appear with an automatic message and a link for the guest to confirm the booking and instructions for the payment.
- Once the email is successfully sent, the Quote status would appear either as Pending for payment (in case you request a payment to confirm the booking), or as Pending for guest (in case your guest can confirm the booking without payment). The Booking status will appear as Tentative.
💡 Note: Your calendar will be blocked for 7 days. - If the guest clicks on the confirmation link in the email they will be redirected to your check-out page where they can make a payment:
For... they need to... Credit card payments fill in their credit card details and click confirm & pay.
➡ The booking gets updated directly to a Booked Booking status and the first scheduled down payment will be marked as paid.
Paypal log in to their Paypal account and make the payment via credit card or Paypal.
➡ The booking gets updated directly to a Booked Booking status and the first scheduled down payment will be marked as paid.
Bank transfer They need to click confirm. On the Thank you page they will see your bank account details where they need to transfer the money to.
➡ The booking gets updated directly to a Booked Booking status and the first scheduled down payment will be marked as Overdue.