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do you even want to know about provisional reservations?

← Online Booking Wizard (OBW)
This is a fairly complex decision and the answer depends on the kind of business you run.

Let's look at the flow in this diagram showing the customer flow through making an online booking, and when reservations are created...



Ideally you want your customers to make confirmed reservations (secured in some way with credit card details or payment)
i.e. the customer flow through the online booking:
  1. leave details / register - provisional reservation
  2. card details / pay - confirmed reservation
But the ideal route doesn't always happen, the question here is how do you want to handle things when they don't go quite to plan.  They might intend to pay, but things can go wrong, for example:
  1. can't find credit card
  2. get interrupted
  3. card not accepted

The point is you have a choice:

  1. EITHER you are only interested in confirmed reservations.  Just ignore others.
  1. PROS - your inventory won't be taken by non-payers.  You don't have to chase up provisional bookers to find out what when wrong
  2. CONS - you may be missing out on rentals where people were serious but had trouble with credit card...
  3. OR you do still care about provisional bookings:
  1. PROS - you maximise the opportunity to take bookings from people online
  2. CONS - you have to do work to chase up on provisional.  Inventory might be taken by no-showers until you can confirm.

Once you've made your choice, here is what you do:

  1. only interested in confirmed reservations.  Just ignore others.
  1. don't send emails for provisional bookings
  2. auto-cancel after 30 minutes
  3. OR you do still care about provisional bookings:
  1. do send emails for provisional bookings
  2. don't auto-cancel

you decide, but let us know if you're still have trouble deciding what is best for your business.



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