A customer is the person who buys: the buyer on a booking or a booking request, not each participant. Samba builds your customer list for you as bookings come in, and recognizes a returning customer by their email address.
One record per email
Each workspace keeps its own customer list, with one record per email. Capitals and stray spaces are ignored, so [email protected] and [email protected] are the same customer.
Two things follow from that:
The same person booking with two different emails becomes two customers. There is no merge tool.
If you run several workspaces, each one has its own, separate record of the same person.
Where customers come from
When someone… | Samba… |
Books on your trip page or through a widget | Creates the customer, or attaches the booking to the existing one and refreshes their details from the checkout |
Sends a booking request | Creates the customer with their name and phone, or reuses the existing one without changing it |
Is entered by you while creating a booking | Attaches the booking to the customer you picked, or creates a new one |
Books through GetYourGuide | Makes the lead traveler the customer |
Is added from Customers → New Customer | Creates the customer with no booking |
The Source on a customer tells you which of these created the record: Public checkout, Widget, Operator created or OTA channel. You can filter the list by it.
A worked example
Ana books your Sintra tour in March with [email protected]. Samba creates her record, with source Public checkout.
In June she books again with the same email but a new phone number. The second booking lands on the same record, and her phone number is updated from that checkout. Her page now shows two bookings.
In September she books with her work email. That is a new customer, and the two records stay separate.
What the status badge means
Status | Means |
Prospect | No bookings counted yet — for example, only a booking request |
Active | Has a confirmed booking on a future departure, or their last booking was confirmed within the past 12 months |
Lapsed | Last booking was confirmed more than 12 months ago, and nothing upcoming |
Anonymized | Their personal data has been removed. See Export, anonymize or delete a customer's data |
The customer's language
Samba stores a preferred language for each customer and uses it for the emails it sends them.
A language the traveler picks at checkout always replaces the stored one.
A language guessed from their browser only fills an empty one.
Only languages your workspace has enabled are stored. If you later disable a customer's language, their emails and portal fall back to your workspace default until you enable it again.
You can change it by hand when you edit the customer. To add languages, see Languages and translations.
GetYourGuide customers without an email
GetYourGuide does not always pass on the traveler's email. Samba then gives the customer a placeholder address ending in @samba.invalid, unique to that booking, so these bookings are never mixed together.
A customer with a placeholder address cannot be emailed and has no traveler portal access. See GetYourGuide bookings.