Create a manual booking

When a guest books with you by phone, by email, or through your direct site without going through an external channel, you capture the booking by hand in ZenHost. The Create Booking form lives at /bookings/create (reachable from the create button on the bookings list).

The journey, in three steps

Step 1 — Guest

Identify the guest. Two options:

• Pick an existing guest — search combobox into your CRM directory.
• Create a new guest — inline form (first name, last name, email, phone, address, country, etc.).

The guest is attached to the booking and appears on the detail page (the Guest card) with a link to their full record.

Step 2 — Stay

The core of the form:

• Property — combobox. The selection auto-fills check-in and check-out times from the property's settings (see Facilities & arrival settings).
• Arrival / Departure — range picker. ZenHost validates calendar availability on entry.
• Arrival time and Departure time — pre-filled, editable in 15-minute steps.
• Adults, Children, Infants — at least 1 adult required.
• Notes — free-text area for the guest's special requests.

Step 3 — Pricing

ZenHost pre-fills the total nights price from the property's rate plan (the rates configured on the Rates & taxes page). You can adjust:

• Total nights price — numeric amount in the property's currency.
• Taxes & fees — list inherited from the rate plan (VAT, city tax, cleaning fee, etc.). You can edit amounts or remove lines.

On submit, the booking is created. A success notification appears: "Booking created successfully", and you're redirected to the new booking's detail page. On failure, the message "Failed to create booking" is shown and you stay on the form.

Side effects to know about

• Guest portal link: ZenHost auto-generates an access link to the guest portal (with access code), surfaced in the Portal card of the detail page. You can copy it and send it to the guest.
• Calendar: the new booking shows up immediately on the grid (month view) and in the bookings list.
• Outbound sync: if the property is connected to a channel (Airbnb, Booking.com), availability is pushed back to that channel automatically to prevent a double-booking.

When to use this path

• Direct booking by phone or email.
• Booking from your direct booking website (the automated flow uses this same backend path).
• Booking for a friend / owner (remember to pick the right rate plan, or switch to a block if it's a free stay).
• Recovering a missing historical booking (or use Import reservations via CSV instead — see Sync).