The duration of the booking can either be defined by the admin as a preset time frame or by the user through the dedicated input form in the product detail page.
PLEASE NOTE: the duration of a booking is expressed in booking units, days, months, hours, and minutes.
When the admin defines the default booking duration, users are only asked to enter the start date.
The booking end date is automatically calculated.
In this case, the booking is for 5 days.
It works differently if you let your users select the duration of their booking.
First of all, you have to define your booking unit.
The booking unit allows the system to calculate the duration of the booking dynamically, based on the quantity set by users in the “Duration” field. It will be calculated as the product of two factors, the value entered by the user (3 in the screenshot below) multiplied by the booking unit set by the admin (3 in the screenshot above).
Suppose you have set the booking unit to “3 days” (as shown in the image above), and that the user has typed “3” as the value for his booking duration, the “total duration” of the booking will be 9 days.
The end date will be automatically calculated as soon as the user selects the start date.
Another option is the unit “minutes“, you can choose between blocks of 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes.
Only if you have set 1 day as booking unit (and therefore selected also the option “Customer chooses units of”) and have enabled the option “Enable calendar range picker“, an interactive calendar will appear to let your users select the booking date.
The duration is automatically calculated.
From the Booking Form section, you can configure the options to show the date-picker as follows:
If you let your users select the duration of their booking/reservation, you can set minimum and maximum values for it in the product settings page. This way you can prevent users from making a booking/reservation for longer or shorter than allowed.
If you don’t want to set any limits to the booking duration, enter “zero” into the concerned field.
Let’s make an example. Suppose we want to allow bookings for the flat “Residenza Marina” in units of three days and for a maximum of 7 units (21 days, then).
To do that, we can configure the product as follows:
By enabling the check min/max duration option in the Booking Form settings, the calendar in frontend will show the dates which are no longer available, including the minimum/maximum duration.
For example, customer A has booked the Amsterdam Room from 12 July – 18 July. The minimum duration to book this room is 3 days, therefore it is not possible for Customer B to book the room from 10 to 18 July, considering the minimum of 3 days plus the booked period.
If you disable the option, the customer will see the calendar with the dates available/unavailable, however, it does not take into consideration the minimum and maximum duration of the room. Therefore the days prior to the reservation will appear clickable in the calendar, even if the booking is not available on those dates.
If the customer wants to book the room from 10 – 14 July will get a message that it is not possible to book this room in the period he wishes.
