A departure is a dated instance of a trip that travelers book onto. You can offer fixed dates, take requests for custom dates, or both.
Two ways to take bookings
Fixed departures — you publish specific dates and travelers book them directly.
On request — travelers propose a date, and you accept or decline. Accepting creates a private departure just for that booking, starting on the requested date at your default start time (below).
Each mode has its own minimum party size and booking cutoff (how close to the start date booking stays open — by default 1 day for fixed dates on multi-day tours, 2 hours for fixed dates on day tours, and 3 days for on-request).
Adding departures
You can add departures one at a time, or generate them from a repeating schedule — pick a frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly), the times of day, and a capacity. You can either leave the end date blank so Samba keeps generating new dates on a rolling basis (12 months ahead by default — adjustable per schedule, from 1 up to 24 months), or set an end date to generate a fixed batch. Running the same schedule again only fills in the missing dates, so you won't get duplicates.
A schedule can be paused (stops generating further dates; you can also choose to remove its upcoming dates that don't have any bookings yet) and resumed at any time. You can also delete a schedule entirely — its existing departures stay on your calendar unless you choose to remove the upcoming unbooked ones.
If you manually change the date or time of a departure that came from a schedule, it stops following that schedule from then on — so re-running the schedule won't touch it, and it won't refill the slot it moved out of.
Default departure times
Every departure needs a start time, and multi-day trips need an end. Set defaults in your experience's Departures section so you don't have to enter them by hand each time:
Start time (9:00 AM by default) — pre-fills every new departure, however you add it: one at a time, from a recurring schedule, or by accepting a booking request.
End time (5:00 PM by default, multi-day trips only) — the hour your trip finishes on its last day. The end date always comes from your trip's duration, so a 7-day trip starting Sunday at 9:00 AM finishes the following Sunday at your default end time, not at 9:00 AM.
Day trips and single-day departures always end exactly at start time plus duration, so there's no end time to set.
Capacity and "sold out"
Each departure has a capacity. As confirmed bookings fill the seats, remaining seats go down; when they reach zero the departure shows as Sold out. If a booking is later cancelled, the seat frees up and the departure opens again automatically.
Once a departure's start time arrives, it shows as Running; once it ends, it shows as Completed — these are just display labels, so they don't affect bookings or cancellations. Departure times are shown converted to your workspace's timezone, everywhere they appear.
You can't set a capacity below the number of people already booked.
While a traveler is on the payment step of checkout, their seats are held for 15 minutes so nobody else can take them. If they don't finish in time, the hold is released and they're asked to confirm availability again before continuing.
Pricing a single departure differently
Need a different price for one date — a holiday surge, an early-bird deal, or a last-minute push? Each departure has its own Pricing tab where you can override your package (or participant type) and add-on prices for that date only. Everything else about the trip stays the same — same currency, same availability.
Departure price — a one-off price list just for this date. Leave an item blank and it keeps the regular catalog price.
Extra pricing tiers — add tiers that kick in automatically, either counting down to the departure (e.g. "until 60 days before") or by seats remaining (e.g. "once 5 seats or fewer are left"). You can stack a few — say an early-bird tier followed by a last-minute one — and whichever tier applies right now is used. If two would apply at once, the one furthest to the right on the table wins.
Give each tier a label, like "Early bird" — travelers see it as a badge on your trip page and at checkout, in their own language if your workspace supports more than one.
Turn on Show original price to display the regular price crossed out next to the discounted one.
Departures with any override show a small pricing badge wherever they're listed, so you can spot them at a glance.
Pricing can only be changed while the departure hasn't started and is still open — once it's sold out, cancelled, or already underway, the Pricing tab becomes read-only.
Private departures (created by accepting a request) don't have a Pricing tab — that traveler already booked at the price you quoted them.
A few things worth knowing:
Bookings already made keep the price they were charged, even if you change a departure's pricing afterwards.
If you modify a confirmed booking, it re-prices using the departure's current pricing — so if pricing has changed since the traveler booked, their total can change too.
New dates from a repeating schedule, and departures on a duplicated experience, never carry pricing overrides forward — set them up fresh each time.
Cancelling a departure
Cancelling a departure cancels all of its confirmed bookings and frees the dates. It doesn't automatically refund anyone — if a refund is due, issue it per booking from that booking's cancellation options.
If any of the affected bookings came from GetYourGuide, cancelling here doesn't reach GetYourGuide — cancel those separately in your GYG Supplier Portal so the traveler is refunded.
If you use Crew Management, cancelling a departure also cancels any crew assigned to it and closes out its open crew tasks.
Moving a booking
Need to move someone to a different date? Use Change departure on the booking to move it to another date of the same trip that has room.