When a guest sends a booking request, Haven can either take those nights off sale immediately or leave them selling until someone actually pays. This account-wide setting lets you choose. It is off by default, which means an unanswered request does not block the dates — on Haven, in your PMS, or on channels like Airbnb that read your Haven calendar.
Requests you have approved always hold their dates, regardless of this setting. Approval is the point where a guest earns a protected window to pay.
- Your best dates rarely get more than one request, and you would rather guarantee that any request you approve is still bookable.
- You answer requests quickly and want the certainty that the dates will be there when you do.
- You have committed the dates to a guest verbally and want the calendar to reflect that before they formally book.
- You list on Airbnb, Vrbo, or through a PMS and don't want a busy-season weekend pulled off those channels while a request sits unanswered.
- You get multiple requests for the same popular dates and want whoever books first to win.
- You would rather occasionally decline an overtaken request than lose bookings to dates that looked unavailable.
- Go to Sites → Single Property (the listings page,
/host?tab=listings).
- Click the gear icon on the listings toolbar to open Property settings.
- Find the Hold dates for pending requests row.
- Toggle it on to hold dates, or off to keep them selling.
- Your choice saves automatically — there's no Save button.
The setting applies to every listing on your account. After you change it, Haven re-publishes availability to your connected channels and PMS so both sides agree. Blocks that were already pushed to a partner are released on the next calendar sync.
Haven checks availability three separate times so a guest can never pay for nights they can't have:
- When you approve the request. If another booking took the dates first, the approval is blocked and you're told why. The guest is not charged and nothing is committed.
- When the guest opens checkout. If the dates went while the request was waiting, the payment form never loads. The guest sees a message in their own language saying the dates were just booked, that nothing has been charged, and offering a link back to your listing to pick different dates.
- Immediately before the card is charged. Pricing and tax work take a moment, and another guest can pay during it. Haven re-checks and stops the charge if the nights are gone.
If two guests pay for the same nights within the same instant, both can clear every check above and only one booking can be confirmed. When that happens Haven:
- Refunds the losing guest's payment in full, automatically — you don't have to do anything.
- Emails that guest to explain their dates were taken moments before their payment went through and that a refund is on its way (5–10 business days to their original payment method).
- Emails you a copy so you know why a payment appeared and reversed. No payout is created and nothing is owed to you for that booking.
This is rare, but it is the trade-off for keeping dates on sale. It is why Haven never simply cancels the losing booking and leaves the guest to chase a refund.
- Account-wide — it applies to all of your listings at once.
- Approved requests always hold. Turning this off only affects requests you haven't answered yet.
- Linked listings are treated as one unit. If two listings share a Calendar Group, a booking on either one blocks the dates on both, so a multi-unit property can't be double-approved.
- Channel calendars follow the setting. With holding off, pending requests are left out of the iCal feed that Airbnb and OwnerRez read, and are sent to Guesty as an inquiry rather than a reservation.
- Your own calendar follows it too. With holding off, a pending request still shows on your host calendar so you can answer it, but the nights stay bookable for guests.
- Pairs naturally with Auto-Expire Pending Requests — auto-expire cleans up stale requests, this setting decides whether they cost you bookings in the meantime.
- It does not affect Instant Book listings, which skip the request step entirely.
- It does not affect inquiries, which never hold dates.
- It does not cancel or expire pending requests — use auto-expire for that.
- It does not change your cancellation policy or refund behavior for confirmed bookings.