What happens when a guest books?

A guest picks their dates on your site and pays by card. The charge is made on your own Stripe account, so the money is yours from the moment it clears — it never passes through us.

Once the payment succeeds, several things happen without you doing anything. The booking appears in your Bookings list. The dates close on your website so nobody else can take them. The guest gets a confirmation, and you get one too.

If a guest starts a checkout and abandons it, the dates do not stay locked. An expired checkout releases them automatically, so a browser tab left open overnight does not cost you a week.

Your part is what happens next. Nothing about the booking obliges you to reply within any particular time, but the gap between paying and hearing from a human is where guests get anxious on a site they have not used before. A short personal message the same day does more for your reviews than most things you could change on the page.

The booking record keeps what was paid and, separately, anything later refunded. Nothing is overwritten, so at the end of the year you have an accurate history rather than a set of adjusted numbers.