Instant Book vs. Booking Requests: What's the Difference

Two ways a booking can start

On Finding Retreats, every room you list is set to one of two booking modes: instant book or booking request. The setting lives on the room itself, in the Accommodation section of your dashboard, not on the retreat as a whole, so a single retreat can mix both. A shared dorm might stay on instant book while a private suite requires your approval.

The mode you choose changes what happens the moment a guest tries to book, and what you see afterward in your Bookings or Booking requests list.

Instant book

With instant book, the guest picks their dates, pays, and the booking is confirmed right away. There's no approval step, and nothing more for you to do until the stay itself. It's the default when you add a new room, and it tends to suit you best when:

• The room is genuinely available to anyone who meets your listing's basic requirements
• You don't need to screen guests individually before they arrive
• You want to reduce friction for guests and keep your conversion rate up

Because there's no waiting period for the guest, instant book bookings tend to convert better than requests. Instant booking is also one of the factors counted toward your business score in the host ranking system, so leaving it off across the board has a small ranking cost as well as a conversion one.

Booking requests

With a room set to booking request instead, a guest who wants to book sends you a request rather than paying immediately. That request lands in your Booking requests list, and a 48-hour clock starts. You have two ways to respond: approve the request as it stands, or offer one or more alternative rooms on the same retreat if the one requested isn't actually available. There is no decline button. A request you don't act on simply expires at the end of its window, and the guest is never charged.

If you approve, the guest gets emailed a link to complete the booking and pay. If you offer alternatives instead, the guest chooses one of the rooms you've offered and confirms it themselves. Either way, no money moves until that final step, so a pending request carries no financial risk on your side.

Booking requests fit retreats where you want more say over who books, for example:

• Specialist programmes where you screen participants before confirming a spot
• Smaller or tightly managed room inventory where you'd rather check details yourself before committing
• Retreats where you want the chance to answer a guest's questions before the booking is locked in

What changes for you day to day

The practical difference mostly shows up in where things appear in your dashboard. Instant book confirmations land straight in your Bookings list, fully confirmed, with nothing left for you to do. Booking requests land in a separate Booking requests list instead, each one showing the guest's details, their dates, the number of guests, the room they asked for, and a countdown to when the request expires, so a pending request doesn't get missed.

Response speed matters beyond any single request, too. How quickly and how consistently you respond to booking requests feeds into the host engagement part of your ranking score. Since there's no decline button, letting requests run out the clock is the only way a request goes unanswered, and it carries the same ranking cost as a slow response, even though technically nothing was declined.

If you run retreats with mixed inventory, it's worth reviewing each room's setting individually rather than assuming one choice fits the whole retreat. A room that rarely fills is often a better candidate for instant book than one you fill by curating who stays.

Related help

See Set up Instant Book and Booking statuses explained in the Help Centre for the exact screens and status meanings.