Suggesting alternative dates with a rejection
After reading this article you will know how to offer up to three free alternative dates when rejecting an enquiry, what the search looks at, how the dates reach the customer in the rejection email, and how to place them in your own template.
When you reject an enquiry, you do not have to leave the customer without an option: one checkbox in the reject dialog offers up to three free dates in the same email that carries the rejection.
When the option appears: only when the rejection email is on (the Send rejection email to the customer checkbox) and the enquiry has a requested date. Without a requested date there is no window to search from.
Finding and sending alternative dates
- Open the enquiry and click Reject.
- Tick Send rejection email to the customer — this is ticked by default.
- Tick Suggest alternative dates directly below it. Only then does the search run; without the tick the rejection goes out as before.
- The search suggests up to three dates. Each one is listed with date, time and room and is ticked — untick a suggestion you do not want to offer.
- Click Reject. The ticked dates go into the rejection email, where the placeholder
{{alternative_dates}}sits.
What the search looks at
- Order: the requested day first, then the days before and after it one by one, within a window from 14 days before to 30 days after the requested date.
- Duration and time: a suggestion takes the time window of the enquiry (for example “18:00–23:00” if that is what the customer asked for). If the enquiry names no time, the whole day applies.
- Rooms: only rooms large enough for the number of guests. The room chosen in the enquiry comes first among the suggestions.
- Checked like the booking page: fixed events, run sheets, room blocks, a turnaround in progress and the lead time of your booking page all count the same way. Dates in the past are never suggested.
A suggestion reserves nothing — it is an offer. If another customer books the same date, the suggestion no longer holds.
What the customer sees in the email
The dates appear in the rejection email below the paragraph thanking the customer for the enquiry — one line per date with date, time and room. If you send no dates, that section disappears and the email reads word for word as before.
Delayed sending: if you have set a later send time in your templates, the system checks the dates again immediately before the actual send. Anything booked in the meantime drops out of the list; if none are left, the rejection goes out without the list of dates.
Adjusting your own rejection template
Under Settings → Email templates you find the template Rejection of enquiry. The placeholder {{alternative_dates}} sits there in a paragraph of its own.
- The placeholder is in your text (its own paragraph): the list of dates appears exactly there.
- The placeholder is missing: the list is appended below the text of the template automatically — your text stays unchanged.
- No dates in this send: the empty paragraph is removed entirely.