Travellers manage their own bookings

The questions a portal answers for you

Can you resend my confirmation? How much do I still owe? What time do we leave? Each of these is a small request, but together they take up a large part of a small team's week. My bookings lets travellers answer them themselves, on your website, at any hour.

Because it lives on your own website, under your theme and in the website's language, travellers stay with your brand rather than being sent to a third-party page.

Signing in without a password to remember

Travellers book as guests, so most have no password. To sign in, they enter the email they booked with and choose Email me a sign-in link. The link works once and expires after 30 minutes; after that they stay signed in on that device for 30 days. If the email has no bookings, they are told so by email.

Travellers who would rather not wait for an email can set a password of at least 8 characters once signed in. The trade-off is simple: the emailed link needs nothing to remember but depends on their inbox; a password is quicker but is one more thing to forget. If they forget it, they use the emailed link and set a new one.

Worked example: a group of six on a trek

A lead traveller books a trek for six friends and pays a deposit. In My bookings they see the booking under Upcoming, with what has been paid and what is due. A week before the balance is due, the reminder arrives; they follow its link and choose Pay now, or pay the full amount instead of the remaining instalments if you use the Instalments plugin.

With the Traveller forms and Waivers plugins on, Before you travel lets the lead send each friend their own link. Each friend fills in their own details and signs the waiver, so the lead does not have to collect everyone's details by message. On your side, the manifest shows details complete and waivers signed for each traveller.

The day before departure, everyone downloads the .ics file to add the trip to their calendar, and the lead downloads the confirmation PDF to carry offline.

What travellers see, and what they do not

Upcoming lists trips to come; Past & cancelled lists the rest; Your requests shows booking requests and enquiries with your replies. Contact us is always there. A traveller can also look up a single booking with its reference and the surname on the booking.

Travellers see only their own bookings, after proving they own the email address, and sign-in forms are protected against bots. Customers are created from bookings only, so the portal never invents an account for someone who has not booked.

In the traveller's language

My bookings follows the language of your website, including right-to-left layouts for Arabic and Hebrew. A traveller who browsed your site in German manages their booking in German too, without you setting anything up separately.

Travellers can also download their own data from the portal. That answers a common privacy request without anyone on your team having to prepare a file.

Common mistakes to avoid

Not putting My bookings in the header, so travellers who lost their email cannot find their way in; add it with the header builder. Booking a group under an office or agent email, which means only that inbox can sign in. And answering portal questions by email anyway: point travellers to the link in their confirmation so the habit takes hold.