Most bookings arrive on their own, from your trip page or a widget. When a customer books by phone, walks in, or you are arranging a group, you create the booking yourself in four steps.
Before you start
Your workspace must be activated (a card on file). See Activating your workspace.
The trip must be published.
Create the booking
The wizard has four steps: Customer, Trip, Participants and Payment.
Go to Bookings and select New Booking. You can also select Create manual booking on a departure, which fills in the trip for you.
Customer. Search for an existing customer, or fill in a new one. Customers are matched by email, so an email you already have reuses that customer.
Trip. Choose the experience and one of its departures. To run a date for this customer alone, turn on Create a new private departure and pick the date and time. The option appears on trips that accept booking requests. On a day tour with pickup points, choose the Pickup point.
Participants. On a multi-day trip, add each participant's name and package. On a day tour, set the Number of participants and each one's Participant type — no names needed. Then add any add-ons; on a day tour a per-person add-on is a quantity, up to the number of participants. Answer the booking questions you can. Anything you leave blank becomes a to-do for the customer in the traveler portal.
Payment. To use a discount code, type it and select Apply. A code you type without applying is ignored.
Choose how to collect the money, then create the booking.
Option | What happens |
Collect payment with Samba | The booking is created Pending and the customer is emailed a payment link. They pay in full, unless you choose Pay deposit + scheduled installments — offered when the trip has a payment plan, is not a day tour, and the date is not too close for the plan's schedule. Paying confirms the booking. See Send a payment link. |
Mark as paid offline | The booking is Confirmed and Paid right away. Choose the method (cash, bank transfer, check, card terminal, other) and an optional reference. No card is charged. |
A Pending booking does not hold seats. Until the customer pays, those seats can be sold to someone else.
What you can do that travelers cannot
Overbook or go under the minimum party size. Samba warns you but does not stop you.
Create a private departure for one booking. Its capacity is the party size.
Add-on rules and add-on stock still apply to you.
What happens next
With Mark as paid offline, the customer receives the confirmation email, unless you tick Skip confirmation email to customer. If required questions are still unanswered, they also receive a reminder.
With a payment link, the confirmation email goes out when the customer pays.
Team members who get new-booking alerts are not emailed about bookings you create here.
Money you collect offline does not count toward Samba's commission.
Can I book more people than the departure has seats?
Can I book more people than the departure has seats?
Yes. The wizard shows a warning and lets you continue. Travelers booking online can never exceed the remaining seats.