Booking desk

The booking desk is at /concierge on the web, and the concierge tab of the mobile app. Concierge and hotel admin accounts both have access.

Finding something to book

Browse or search the catalogue, filtered by category (tours, experiences, transfers, taxis, restaurants). Only vendors who've opted into the concierge channel show up here: a vendor can be on the concierge channel, the guest channel, or both.

Each product shows its concierge price and, for anything except taxis, its upcoming available time slots. Taxis book without picking a slot: you set a pickup time instead.

Making a booking

Pick a product and rate plan, then enter the guest's details: first name, room number, party size, and optionally an email or a note for the vendor. Taxi bookings also ask for pickup time, pickup location and drop-off location.

The guest pays on their own device

For anything with a price, no card details are taken at the desk. Creating the booking takes you to its detail page, which shows a payment link and a QR code: the guest scans the QR right there, or follows the link in the email we send if you entered their address. Either way they complete payment on their own phone or laptop, and the booking shows as awaiting payment until they have.

The link stays valid for 2 hours. If the guest doesn't pay in time, the booking cancels itself and any held capacity is released. Nothing is charged.

If the platform has a booking fee turned on, the payment page shows it as its own line on top of the price you quoted, and the guest pays price plus fee. The fee is not refunded if the booking is later cancelled: refunds and your hotel's commission are both worked out on the price alone.

Once the payment goes through, what happens next depends on how the vendor has set up that product:

• Instant confirmation: the booking confirms as soon as the payment is taken, and the money split is recorded straight away.
• On request: the booking sits as requested until the vendor accepts or declines it from their bookings page.

Restaurant bookings never take a payment through Masihambe (the guest pays the restaurant directly), so they skip the payment step entirely.

Letting the hotel pay instead

For any other priced booking, the form also asks who pays: guest (the default, above) or hotel. The toggle is always there, but if your hotel has no verified billing email yet, picking "Hotel pays" explains what's missing and the booking won't submit until your hotel admin adds and verifies one on the hotel portal's Settings page.

Pick "Hotel pays" and you get two ways to collect the card details:

• Pay now: same as the guest flow above, except you're the one who opens the pay link and enters the hotel's card, right there at the desk.
• Email the link: check one or more of the hotel's verified payment addresses and the link goes to them instead. You're copied on that email automatically. Whoever receives it completes checkout on their own device.

Either way, the guest never sees anything about the payment. If you captured their email, they still get the ordinary booking-created and booking-cancelled emails, just with no pay link or charge mentioned. The link itself may expire on a different schedule than the guest link (your platform admin can set a separate hotel-pay expiry; it falls back to the same 2 hours otherwise).

The hotel also gets its own emails: one when the booking is created, saying what to post to the guest's folio, and another whenever it's later cancelled or declined, saying what to reverse (and whether anything was ever charged, and how much of it was refunded). Both go to every verified billing address, and you're copied on them too.

Tracking bookings

The desk has three views:

• Active: everything requested or confirmed.
• Past: completed, cancelled, declined or no-show.
• All

Opening a booking shows its full detail, including the ledger entries: exactly how that booking's money split between the vendor, your hotel's commission and the platform fee.

For the demo taxi vendor, a confirmed booking also shows live (simulated) dispatch status: driver name, vehicle, plate and ETA.

Cancelling

You can cancel a booking while it's awaiting payment, requested or confirmed. Cancelling one that's still awaiting payment just voids the payment link: nothing was charged, so there's nothing to refund. Cancelling a confirmed booking automatically reverses its money (a matching set of negative ledger entries, never an edit to the original ones) and refunds the payment if one was taken. Any held availability slot capacity is released back for other bookings.