The Customer Booking Experience
This page walks through a booking exactly as your customer sees it. It is worth reading once before you go live, so you know what your settings actually produce.
The booking panel
On a bookable product, a Plan your booking panel appears above the add-to-cart button. It is built from your product settings — nothing appears that you have not configured.
| Part | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| The Multiple Nights badge | The product's booking type |
| Location: … line | The Location tab, when enabled |
| The date fields | The booking type — a calendar, a date box, times, or a duration |
| Guests | The Persons tab |
| Person types | The person types you created |
| Room (or your own label) | The Resources tab |
| Availability | A live check against your availability rules and existing bookings |
| Services | The Services tab |
| Fees and extras | The Extras / Fees tab |
| Booking summary and Estimated price | Everything above, priced |
| Book now | The Booking Label on the product, or Book now |
The panel closes with "Your booking details will be confirmed before checkout."
The availability calendar
Date-based booking types show a calendar rather than a plain date box.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| ‹ › | Move a month at a time |
| 1 / 2 | Show one month or two side by side |
| The legend | Available · Booked · Not available · Selected range |
Days that are closed by an availability rule, already taken, or outside the booking window are greyed out and cannot be clicked. For a nights or days booking the hint reads "Choose check-in, then choose check-out."; for multi-date types it reads "Choose 1 to 10 available dates."
Tips
The calendar is the fastest way to check your own availability rules. Open the product on your storefront and look at which days are grey — that is exactly what a customer will see.
Guests, person types and resources
- Guests uses your own label and shows the cap: "Up to 4 people can join this booking."
- Person types appear with a quantity box each and the hint "Quantity for this person type."
- The resource dropdown starts with Best available and lists each resource with its surcharge, e.g. Suite 102 (Pool View) +₹800.00, above "Choose a resource or let us assign one."
- Availability updates as the customer chooses, reading either "Choose booking details to check availability." or "Available for your selected details."
Services, fees and extras
Services and extras appear in two groups, labelled with the names you chose. Required fees are pre-ticked and marked with * — the customer cannot remove them.
The live price
As soon as the selection is valid, Estimated price shows a full breakdown.
Booking summary
2026-09-14 to 2026-09-16 | 2 people | Suite 101 (Garden View) | Airport pickup | City tourism fee
Estimated price
Pay now ₹3,105.00
Base: ₹4,500.00 per night x 2 nights = ₹9,000.00
Extras: ₹1,200.00
Fees: ₹150.00
Pay now: ₹3,105.00
Balance later: ₹7,245.00
The Pay now / Balance later split only appears when a deposit or instalment rule applies — see Pricing.
The product's catalogue price also carries a unit suffix, so a nights product shows ₹4,500.00 / night rather than a bare figure.
What happens when a booking is refused
Three checks run when the customer clicks Book now. Each produces a plain error notice and stops the booking.
| Message | Cause | What the customer should do |
|---|---|---|
| Please provide valid booking dates. | No dates chosen, or the page was left open too long | Re-pick the dates and try again |
| This product allows up to N people per booking. | More guests than the product allows | Reduce the guest count, or make two bookings |
| Selected booking slot is not available. | Someone booked it first, or a rule blocks it | Choose another date or another resource |
Tips
"Please provide valid booking dates" on a form that clearly has dates in it usually means the page has been sitting open for a long time and its security token has expired. A refresh fixes it.
Straight to checkout
When the booking is accepted, the customer is taken directly to Checkout rather than back to the product page. This is deliberate: a booking holds a slot, so the sooner it is paid for, the better.
Two settings change this:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Catalog mode | Bookable products cannot be bought at all; the button reads View details |
| Quote flow mode | The button reads Request quote and the customer returns to the product page |
Both are under Product Settings → Global Settings → Storewide booking options — see Product Setup.
In the cart
The line item is tagged (Booking) and carries the full reservation.
Deluxe Suite Stay
₹4,500.00 ₹3,105.00 Save ₹1,395.00
Booking Type: Multiple nights /
Booking From: 2026-09-21 00:00:00 (+00:00) /
Booking Till: 2026-09-23 00:00:00 (+00:00) /
Persons: 1 / Resource: #1 / Services: 1 / Extras: 1 / Person Types: 1 /
Pay now: ₹3,105.00 / Balance due later: ₹7,245.00
The cart total is the pay-now figure, which is why the line shows a saving against the full price when a deposit rule applies.
At checkout and on the order
The same booking details appear in the checkout order summary, and are written onto the order line item as Booking From, Booking Till and — for deposits — Booking Pay Now and Booking Balance Due.
Once the order is placed, a booking record is created and linked to it, and it appears in your Bookings list and on the customer's My Bookings page.
Coupons
Ordinary WooCommerce coupons work on booking lines, subject to the three controls under Global Settings → Products → Global Pricing → Coupons: whether coupons apply at all, whether they stack, and the maximum percentage one may take off a booking. See Pricing.
Testing it yourself before launch
- Open the product on your storefront in a private browser window.
- Check the calendar greys out the days you expect.
- Select a valid window and confirm the price breakdown matches your rules.
- Deliberately break the rules — too many guests, a closed day — and read the error.
- Complete a booking and check it appears in the admin Bookings list with the right dates and total.
- Open My account → My Bookings and confirm it is there too.
Next step
- My Bookings — what happens after the booking is made.
- Troubleshooting — if any of the above does not behave.