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How to add booking cut-off (how long before departure a tour is bookable)

What is booking cut-off?​

Booking cut-off defines how many hours before your experience's start time it becomes unbookable on your online booking engine and by your resellers. If you i.e. select 12 hour booking cut-off time, customers and resellers won't be able to make a booking less than 12 hours before the experience starts.

Note, that your own employees can always book until departure via Booking desk regardless of a defined cut-off time.

What are the benefits of having short booking cut-off?​

Our data shows that suppliers saw a 16% booking volume lift when they changed their booking cut-off time to 12 hours or less. Many last-minute bookings take place when a traveler is already in-destination and resent research states that 35% of travelers have used mobile phones to book a tour or activity. By lowering your booking cut-off time to 12 hours or less, you’re capturing two sets of last-minute bookers: those that are a day away from the trip, planning out their upcoming itinerary, and those that have already arrived in-destination, seeking an activity right then and there.

How do I set a booking cut-off?​

1. Click Products > Experiences on the left hand side menu and select the product you want to add a booking cut-off to.
2. Navigate to Availability > Booking cut-off in the left-hand side panel.

3. For Date and Time products, select your cut-off time from the drop-down menu and then click Continue.

4. For Just date, no time products you can set a booking cut-off relative to one of the three following timings:

  1. Relative to opening time
    Cut-off is calculated based on the opening time of your business. For example, if the business opens at 8 a.m. and you have a 2-hour booking cut-off, the booking cut-off is at 6.a.m.
  2. Relative to closing time
    Cut-off is calculated based on the closing time of your business. For example, if the business closes at 8 p.m. and you have a 2-hour booking cut-off, the booking cut-off is at 6.p.m.
  3. Relative to one set time
    Cut-off is calculated based on a set time. For example, if the set time is 5 p.m. and you have a 2-hour booking cut-off, the booking cut-off is at 3 p.m.

For Viator connected products, make sure that the booking cut-off is the same in the Viator product settings and the Bókun products settings.

Please note that some cut-off types are not compatible to certain product types:

  • Date-only product is not compatible with booking cut-off that’s relative to start time.
  • Date-and-time product is not compatible with booking cut-off that’s relative to opening hours and relative to closing hours.