Managing Booking Requests as a Host

Where requests show up

When a room is set to booking request, an incoming request appears in Booking requests in your dashboard, alongside any others waiting for a response. Each one shows the guest's name and email, the retreat, their dates, the number of guests, the room they asked for, and any message they added when they sent it. Pending requests carry a visible countdown to when they expire, so nothing waiting on you gets buried.

Opening a request takes you to its full detail page, with the same information laid out alongside your response options.

Your two responses

There is no decline button on a booking request. You have exactly two ways to respond:

• Approve the request as it stands, which emails the guest a link to complete their booking and pay
• Offer one or more alternative rooms on the same retreat, if the room requested isn't actually available, which lets the guest choose one and confirm it themselves

Either response resets the clock so the guest gets a fresh window to act. If you don't respond at all, the request expires automatically at the end of its window and the guest is never charged. That's deliberate: it means a pending request never carries financial risk for you, and a guest is never left in limbo indefinitely if you go quiet.

Once you've responded, the request becomes read-only. You can still see your response message and, if you offered alternatives, exactly which rooms you offered, but the approve and alternatives actions disappear.

Responding well

A few things are worth knowing before you sit down to work through your queue:

• The guest isn't charged when they send a request, only when they complete checkout after you approve it or they confirm an alternative, so there's no rush driven by payment risk
• If the exact room requested is genuinely unavailable, offering alternatives keeps the booking alive instead of letting it lapse
• A message the guest attaches to their request is worth reading before you respond. It often answers questions that would otherwise mean a back-and-forth after approval

Why response time matters

How quickly and how consistently you respond to booking requests is tracked as part of the host engagement side of your ranking score. Fast, regular responses help that score; letting requests run out the clock without action drags it down, even though nothing was technically declined. If you manage several retreats with requests enabled, it's worth checking Booking requests on a regular schedule rather than only when a notification prompts you, since the countdown starts the moment the guest sends the request, not when you happen to open your dashboard.

Team members with manager-level access to your account can also see and respond to booking requests, which is useful if you split day-to-day guest handling across a small team. Staff-level logins are view-only and won't see incoming requests at all.

Related help

See Approve a booking request or offer alternative rooms, Manage incoming bookings, and Response time goals and why they matter in the Help Centre for the exact screens and scoring details.