Once an experience is published, travelers can book and pay for it on their own. This guide covers the last stretch: check you are ready, put the experience in front of travelers, and know what each side sees when the booking comes in.
1. Check you are ready to sell
You need | Why |
A live Stripe account connected | Checkout is closed without a working Stripe connection. Samba also sends no customer emails until a live account is connected. |
An activated workspace | You cannot publish until the owner has added a card. |
A published experience | Only published experiences appear on your booking site, in links and in widgets. |
At least one upcoming departure with seats left | Travelers can only pick departures that are still bookable. |
Connect your live Stripe account before your first booking. Emails that Samba could not send, such as a booking confirmation, are not sent later.
2. Share a link
Every published experience has a trip page on your Samba booking site, branded with your logo and colors. A link is the fastest way to get your first booking: send it by email, put it in a social bio, or turn it into a QR code.
Go to Settings → Website widgets. The page opens on the Links tab. Choose Experience page, pick your experience, then select Copy link.
Other link types open your full trip list, a calendar of dates, or the checkout for one specific departure.
3. Or embed a widget on your website
On the Embeds tab of the same page, choose a widget and paste its snippet into your site. Visitors browse dates and start booking without leaving your website, and they need no login.
Widget | Shows |
Button | A call-to-action button, optionally with a "from" price |
Upcoming Departures | A list of one experience's bookable departures |
Calendar | A month view; picking a day lists that day's departures |
Product List | All your published experiences |
4. What your traveler sees
The traveler picks a date. A day tour shows an availability calendar; a multi-day tour shows a list of departures. Sold-out and past-cutoff departures are not shown.
At checkout they enter their details and choose who is coming:
Multi-day tour | Day tour | |
They choose | A package for each participant | How many of each participant type, and a pickup point if you offer them |
Participants | Named | Counted, not named |
They pay | In full, or by payment plan if the experience has one | In full |
They can also add add-ons and enter a discount code.
When the traveler moves to the payment step, Samba holds their seats for 15 minutes. Their card is charged only once every check has passed and the booking exists. If anything fails before that, nothing is charged.
5. What you see
The booking appears under Bookings as Confirmed, and its seats come off the departure.
Its payment status is Paid, or Partially paid when the traveler paid a deposit on a payment plan.
The traveler receives a booking confirmation email.
Team members subscribed to new-booking alerts receive an email too.
The money lands in your own Stripe account. See How payments work.
You can also add a booking yourself from the panel. See Create a booking.
What to read next
How booking requests work, if you take bookings on request