Messages to guests

Every booking with a phone number gets a WhatsApp message. Guests reply in the same thread, and their answer lands on the Today screen without anyone typing it in.

What a guest receives

When the booking is made. The day and time in your venue’s clock, the services, the six-character code and the guest’s own link for viewing, rescheduling or cancelling. This goes out whether the booking came from your booking page, from you, or from an assistant — any booking that carries a phone number. A walk-in never gets a message.
Before the appointment. Only when Ask guests to confirm is on in Setup. The message goes out exactly as long before the start as that setting says, and asks the guest to confirm, say they are running late, or cancel. It is sent once per booking, and only while the booking is still un-confirmed.
When the booking is cancelled. By the guest, by you, or by an assistant.
When the booking moves. A reschedule the guest makes from their own link sends them the new time.
The gate code, on the check-in day. At a place with a gate code, a confirmed stay gets the code on the morning of check-in, at the Sent at time in your venue’s clock, with the check-in time and a short line of your house rules. It is sent once per stay, never to a cancelled one, and never to a stay still waiting for your confirmation. See Places, stays and halls.
When a hall request is approved. A hall guest’s approval says their booking for their number of guests is confirmed, not “your table”.

That is the whole list. Book sends no marketing, no review asks and no receipts.

Messages are written in the guest’s own language when the booking page told us which one it was, and in both of your venue’s languages otherwise — one bubble, Arabic first.

The one message to you

Every message above goes to a guest. One goes to you: when an applied season ends, Book sends one WhatsApp line saying so, with the season’s name and your venue’s — for example Ramadan has ended at Halaq Noor. Your hours and prices are back to normal. It goes to your venue’s own WhatsApp number, or its phone number if there isn’t one, once per season. Without a number, the line in the Seasons section of /app/bookings is the whole notice. See Seasons.

One number

Every Book message comes from Qaema’s WhatsApp Business number, not from your venue’s number. Your own number stays what it always was: for calls, and for the WhatsApp button on your menu.

Because one number serves every venue, a reply is matched to the guest by their phone: their most recent booking that has not yet passed. A guest with two open bookings gets one short message back asking which code they mean.

What a guest can reply

The confirmation ask carries three buttons — Yes, Running late and Cancel — and tapping one is the same as typing. Typed words work too, in Arabic or English, in any case and with or without diacritics:

Yes: yes, y, ok, confirm, نعم, اي, ايه, تمام, اكد, أكد, موافق
Running late: late, running late, delayed, متأخر, بتأخر, راح أتأخر, تأخير
Cancel: cancel, no, n, الغاء, إلغاء, الغي, لا

Yes marks the booking confirmed. Running late keeps the slot and flags the card. Cancel cancels the booking, frees the time straight away, and sends the guest the cancellation message.

The short answers no, n and لا only cancel a booking the confirmation ask actually went out for — they are answers to a question, and on their own they are as likely to be part of a sentence. Before the ask, a guest who writes just “no” is asked what they mean; cancel and إلغاء cancel at any time.

Anything we can’t read gets one short reply asking for Yes, Running late or Cancel together with the booking code. A bare booking code does the same, because a code says which booking, not what to do with it: ABC234 yes is understood, ABC234 on its own is answered with the question.

A message from a number with no open booking is ignored — nothing is sent back to it.

What Today shows

On /app/reservations, a booking’s card carries where its confirmation stands:

Asked — the confirmation message went out and nothing has come back yet.
Confirmed — the guest replied Yes.
Running late — the guest said so. The slot is still theirs.
no reply to reminder — amber, half an hour before the booking starts (or at the booking time, when you ask for confirmation less than half an hour ahead) with still no answer. A no reply never cancels anything. The booking stands until you say otherwise; the Call button on the card dials the guest.
Message failed — amber with Call guest. WhatsApp refused the message, so the guest was never reached. The booking itself is untouched: pick up the phone.

How long messages are kept

A booking’s messages are deleted thirty days after the booking ends, together with the rest of what identified the guest. Nothing older is kept.