Whatever you take at the point of booking, you know the trade-off. Make the terms strict and you protect your quiet Tuesdays from no-shows, but you also make some guests hesitate at checkout, and you spend real phone time explaining to disappointed customers why the money is staying put. Make them generous and the no-shows come back.
We've run this on two venues prior to roll out and in the 14 days leading up to wide spread launch those venues have gained more than £500 in flexibility fees. If you currently offer free cancellation or modification then this can be a fantastic new revenue source
BookingNinja files all of this under Deposits, but for most venues that deposit isn't a holding fraction at all. It's the whole thing: the full ticket price, or the entire bill settled the moment the guest books. That makes the trade-off sharper, not softer. Asking somebody for £900 up front and then telling them the terms are final is a much harder sentence to say than asking for £90.
Airlines stopped picking a side years ago. They priced the difference instead: a refundable ticket costs more than a non-refundable one, and the customer decides which they want. Flexible Bookings brings that to your booking page, and it works the same whether the guest is paying a holding deposit or the entire bill.
A small fee for a lot of certainty
When you switch flexibility on, guests see one extra option at the payment step. Tick a box, pay a little more, and the booking becomes flexible: they can cancel for a refund, move to another date, or both, depending on what you've chosen to offer.
The price sits right next to the benefits, with the exact date and time the flexibility runs until. Tick the box and the fee joins the total. There's no small print to read and nobody to ring and ask.
The guest isn't buying an escape hatch, they're buying certainty. Booking a wedding venue months out, or a big birthday table three weeks ahead, comes with a quiet worry about plans changing, and for a fraction of the booking value that worry is gone. Their confirmation says so in black and white (well, green):
You decide what flexibility means
You configure it all on the deposit itself, next to your existing cancellation policy, so a full-payment event and a small holding deposit can sell completely different flexibility:
- What it grants. Cancel for a refund, move the booking, or both.
- Where refunds go. Back to the guest's card, or issued instantly as a gift card, so the money stays with your venue until they come back to spend it.
- What it costs. A flat fee, or a percentage of whatever the guest is paying today, so it scales with party size and works with payment plans.
- The cutoff. How long before the booking flexibility can be used, in days and hours. A restaurant might allow changes up to 48 hours out; a wedding package might say 30 days.
Card or gift card
The refund destination is the setting worth thinking hardest about. Send refunds back to the card and the guest is made whole in the way they expect, which is the safest answer for a first-time booker who paid a large balance. Issue them as a gift card instead and the money never leaves your venue: the guest is holding credit rather than a grievance, and the cancellation that would have been a straight loss becomes a visit you haven't had yet.
You can set it per deposit, so the wedding package and the Tuesday dinner service don't have to make the same call.
Purchased flexibility works even where your normal policy says no. If a session has customer changes switched off and the deposit is non-refundable, a guest who bought flexibility can still cancel or move until the cutoff. That's the product they paid for. Everyone else stays on your standard policy, unchanged.
You keep the fee, whatever happens
If the guest never uses their flexibility, the fee is extra margin on a booking you were taking anyway. This is where taking the full amount up front works in your favour: a percentage fee is charged on what actually goes through checkout, so the venue in the screenshots above charges 5% and a £900 booking banks an extra £45 for a tick in a box. A restaurant taking a genuine £10-a-head holding deposit might set a flat £3 instead. What that adds up to over a month depends entirely on how many of your guests tick the box, which is the number worth watching when you first turn it on.
If the guest cancels, they get their money back minus the flexibility fee, which stays with you (minus 5% fee), and you get the slot back with enough notice to resell it instead of an empty table and an argument. If they move, a would-be cancellation becomes a booking that still happens, and the cutoff re-anchors to the new date.
Compare that with the two things a strict policy usually buys you: a kept deposit and a guest who never comes back, or a grudging goodwill refund and nothing to show for it. Flexibility replaces both with a transaction everyone agreed to in advance.
Guests help themselves
A guest who bought flexibility manages the whole thing from their booking page, the same link that's already in their confirmation email. Their booking wears a badge showing exactly how long the flexibility lasts, and the change panel spells out what they can do:
Inside the cutoff, cancelling shows them precisely what they'll get back and what the fee was, before they confirm:
Moving works the same way. The guest picks a new date from whatever you have open, the booking moves with its payment attached, and nothing has to be cancelled and rebooked by hand at your end. The flexibility travels with it, so a guest who moves once can still move again while the new cutoff holds.
Refunds to card go back automatically, and gift-card refunds are minted and emailed on the spot. The guest gets a cancellation email with the exact numbers, so there's no "where's my refund" phone call and nothing for your team to work out by hand.
Past the cutoff, the booking quietly reverts to your standard policy. The badge says so before they click, and the cancel screen says so again.
The details
- Terms are locked at purchase. What the guest bought is what they get, even if you change the deposit's flexibility settings afterwards. Changing your config never rewrites an existing booking's rights.
- The fee is priced on what's actually paid today. Percentage fees apply to the amount going through checkout now, so they play fair with deposits, full ticket payments and partial-payment plans alike.
- The fee itself is never refunded. It appears as its own line on the guest's receipt.
- Moving is unlimited until the cutoff. A guest can rearrange twice if life demands it, and the cutoff always counts back from the booking's current date.
- It only appears where it makes sense. Free bookings, fully-discounted checkouts and card-capture-only deposits never see the option.
- Every config change is audited. Flexibility settings live in the same Activity Log as the rest of your venue setup: who changed it, what changed, and one-click rollback.
Getting set up
Open Deposits, pick the deposit you want (or create one), and you'll find the new Flexibility section just under Cancel Options. Turn it on, choose the grants, set your fee and cutoff, save. It takes about two minutes, and the option appears on your booking page immediately.
If you're unsure where to start: 5% of what's paid today, with refunds issued as gift-card credit and a 48-hour cutoff. On small holding deposits a flat £3 to £5 reads better than a percentage. You can tune it per deposit any time.
Available now
Flexible Bookings is included with your plan, so there's nothing extra to subscribe to. Turn it on for one deposit and watch how many guests tick the box. After a month the maths will be your own, not ours.
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