TakeABreak's Booking enquiry confirmation system is designed to make it quick and easy for you to respond to accommodation enquiries. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. Enquiry arrives - Select your response
You will get notification of the booking enquiry by email. Do not reply to this email. 

The enquiry email shows details of the enquiry such as dates, number of persons, enquirer's name and address as well as any additional questions or comments. It then shows the following response options:

• Available - to confirm availability and pricing
• Not Available - if you cannot accommodate this request
• Offer alternative dates - if you can offer similar dates but not exactly those requested
• Request more information - if you need to ask questions to finalise your quote
• Respond by phone - if you prefer to call the enquirer
• Duplicate enquiry, no need to respond - if the enquiry is a duplicate or for some other reason it is not appropriate to respond

Click on the link next to the appropriate response for this enquiry. If the link doesn't open a new web page you can copy the link from the email and paste it into the address area on your browser and hit enter or click "Go". If you don't have the email you can log in, click on the property name and then click on the "pending requests" tab.

2. Complete your response
If you selected Respond by phone you will now see the enquirer's phone and other contact details so you can call them straight away.

If you selected another response you will see the correct template response whic already includes most of the basics of your response. You need to enter the quote price and for offer alternative dates the alternative dates you wish to offer.
 
Now add any additional text to your response in the white Enter your comments section that forms the middle section of your email response. You should mention any extra charges (eg linen, breakfast if optional, etc). You should answer any specific questions the enquirer asked. Add any additional comments you wish to personalise your response to the enquirer's specific requirements and dates.

If you selected 'not available' these dates will be blocked in your calendar unless you untick the box next to 'block dates if not available'.
 
3. Click "OK/send response"
Once you've selected the correct response and entered any additional comments or information, you can just click send. You will get a copy of the email to the enquirer, and you can see on the screen what it will say.

Follow-up to enquiry response
You can now correspond direct with the enquirer to finalise your booking. You may wish to follow up by phone if you have not had a response to your email within 24 hours (sometimes email gets blocked or the address is typed in wrong).

We will shortly be offering template response options such as requesting a deposit, to assist with your further correspondance with the enquirer.

Response times
Your average response time will be shown on your property listing so it's in your interest to respond as quickly as practical. Sometimes enquiries are made very late at night and obviously these will need to wait until the next morning to answer.

If you do not respond within the response time that you have specified (24 hours is the default, you can change this under the "details" tab for your property) our system will send a reminder. If there is still no response then the property listing will be temporarily suspended until you can respond. An apology for the failure to respond will be sent by us to the enquirer.

Please note that if your property listing is suspended this is not meant to be a "penalty". We understand there can be many reasons which lead to a failure to respond. We are simply taking the listing offline until we hear from you to let us know you'll be able to respond to future enquiries. This is to prevent further potential guests making enquiries which can't be answered in a timely fashion.

Email bounces
Sometimes the response email to the enquirer will "bounce". When this happens the system will email you letting you know this has happened. Usual reasons for this sort of bounce are typos or non-working email addresses. In these cases the best action is to phone the enquirer and our message will include the number for your convenience. Please note that due to the nature of the internet there will be cases where the email doesn't get through that are not detected by our system.

Attachments
Attachments can be very useful for example to attach your terms and conditions, or a PDF document with detailed property information. To add an attachment, just click "browse" to select your file then click the "upload" button. You need to have already completed any other required information at this point. You can set up standard attachments which are automatically loaded using the template tailoring system below.

History
We keep a record of all your responses, and you can see the response by clicking on the enquiry (under "availability and enquiries") then clicking on the link next to response type.

Tailoring your templates
The TakeABreak Booking Confirmation System will automatically use the standard response templates. However, you can add your own templates for some or all response types (available, not available, etc). You can even set up more than one template for each response type and choose which one to use when responding.

To set up custom response templates, log in and go to the Response Templates tab at the 'account' level. Click "new" to add a response template. You can set up response templates for a selected response type and choose whether to use that response for all properties or just for selected properties. You will find detailed help on how to set this up on the right hand side of the page. Response templates are an advanced feature as the standard responses should be adequate for the great majority of accommodation operators.

The response templates can include attachments - for example your terms and conditions.