What Happens When You Press Reserve

Checks Before a Booking Is Made

• Signing in: Signed out, the button reads Sign in to book, and the server refuses the booking whatever the button says.
• A card on your account: Until you add one, the booking box reads Add a card to book instead of Reserve. The server refuses a booking without one, request or instant, so a host never approves a stay with no means of payment.
• A company card: A company's card counts as well, provided you book the trip for that company.
• Dates and price: The server works out the dates and price again, ignoring any number the page displayed.

Booking for Work

Select This trip is for work in the booking box, and two optional boxes open: Purchase order and Cost center. If you belong to a company on Kabora, Book it for also appears: choose the company, or Just me.

Whatever you enter prints as one line, "For work", then the company, purchase order and cost center, on your receipt, your trip page and your host's copy of the booking. If you clear the box, none of it is kept. See "Traveling for work, and booking for a company".

When a Booking Is Refused

A refusal names the host's own rule rather than stating "unavailable":

• Minimum stay: For example, a three-night minimum.
• Notice: The hours or days of notice required before arrival.
• Booking window: A calendar open only a set number of months ahead.
• Turnover nights: Nights kept free around every stay.
• Arrival and departure days: A day of the week a stay cannot start or end on.

Nights already taken are listed by date under the message.

You can make twelve booking attempts in ten minutes, counted by the connection you are on, not your account. The thirteenth is refused, saying how long to wait.

Pressing the button twice for the same place, the same dates and the same email address does not create a second booking; you arrive at the one that exists.

When a Booking Goes Through

You arrive at your trip page, not a separate confirmation screen; the booking lives there from then on.

• A request: The page is headed One step left: your payment. Confirm your payment there and the request goes to your host, going through only if they accept. If they decline or do not answer, you are not charged.
• An instant booking: The dates are confirmed when the payment goes through, not before.

An Unpaid Booking Holds No Nights

Your nights are not taken off sale while a booking waits for payment, so somebody else can book the same dates. If their payment goes through first, your booking is released at that moment and Kabora emails you. This happens within their payment, so it cannot run late or be switched off.

Kabora has a written deadline for unpaid bookings: 24 hours from booking, or two hours before check-in, whichever comes first. It is switched off: a job can apply it on the hour, but the job is not running. So an unpaid booking remains, showing you a stay to pay for and your host a booking that may never happen, until somebody else pays for those nights.

If your host closes those nights, or they are booked another way first, your trip reads Dates no longer available, with no Pay button and a line explaining why. Nothing has been charged.

Pay as soon as you can: until then, the dates are not yours.