Optional bookings & expiration rules

Creating an optional booking provides the guest the option to 'block' availability but not have a 'real' reservation yet. The guest/partner will have some time to overthink their reservation. Without any payment has been done upfront, so the booking is not creditworthy yet.  

Within the time between booking and expiration date, the guest can call either to confirm or decline(without any reason or charges) the optional reservation.

The conditions which are there to define in a flexible way what the reservation status needs to become after the option is expired is described on this page. 

Option & expiration rules

The setup of the expiration rules is done on the Reservation category. The users who have access to a specific reservation category, are able do add/change/remove the expiration date. 

Option and Expirationrules
Currently, we are able to define in general, after how many days an option will expire. The action taken when the booking is expired, is normally processed by script. By script it is possible to define to which status it needs to change. The statuses can be one of these: 

• Provisional

• Definitive

• Expired

Before we can start: 

In order to be able to create an optional booking through Reservation manager, some rights have to be enabled for the user.

1. Permission to create an optional reservation:

   Open

   

When a user creates an optional reservation through Reservation Manager, the expiration date may be overwritten: 

Open

Only users which have this right enabled are allowed to  overwrite the expire date: 

• Permission to overwrite the optional expire date: 

When an optional reservation is expired, but the user wants to change the option to either optional or provisional these rights can be beneficial to achieve this goal:

• To be able to change the status of an expired booking in case the guest changes his/her mind: 

Expiration rules 

The expiration rules are defined at Reservation Category level. 

Variables which can be defined are: 

1. Book date from/to

2. Arrival date from/to 

3. Bookable days of the week (conditions can be configured differently per book day of the week)

4. The minimum and maximum number of days before arrival that the option may be created 

5. A time to be set after which the guest will get extra time(days) for the option to be expired (when option is created after closing time for example)

6. The reservation status to which the booking will be changed by script after the time has passed and the option has expired. This can be: 

   1. Provisional

   2. Definitive

   3. Expirered