Instant Book and Booking Requests

Each listing determines whether guests book instantly or send a request first. The setting is stored with the listing and your direct-booking rules.

Booking Requests

When a guest sends a request, their card carries a pre-authorization hold for what is due today. You are notified only once their bank has approved the hold. Nothing is charged until you approve.

Approve (Accept on the bell) and Decline are in the calendar's Booking requests review and on the bell; both email the guest.

• Approve: The hold is charged and the stay is confirmed. If the charge fails, your approval stands and the guest has 48 hours to update their payment.
• Decline: The request ends, and the hold on the guest's card is released. Any queued automated messages for the stay are skipped.

A request with no hold, because nothing is due today, is paid by the guest from their trip page after you approve.

Instant Book

Instant bookings take payment at checkout and confirm immediately.

Competing Guests for the Same Nights

A request holds no nights, so they remain on sale while it waits. Two guests can ask for the same dates, and the first stay paid takes them. That is an Instant Book, or the request you approve, which charges its hold at once.

A request whose nights are taken ends, and its hold is released. Once a booking is confirmed, the database itself refuses to overlap it, so two guests can never buy the same night.

Bookings for Today

Under Settings → Defaults → Requests, choose what happens when a guest books for today:

• Ask me: The booking arrives as a request and waits for you to accept it.
• Approve automatically: The booking is confirmed like any other Instant Book.

Same day requests stop time is a time in the listing's own time zone, 6 PM unless you change it. After it, the earliest check-in is tomorrow, and today is grayed out in the listing's calendar.

A listing can configure its own answers under Availability → Instant book → Requests; until it does, it follows Defaults. None of these settings ever stops a booking you enter yourself; you receive only a warning.