In the USA, the big RV rental sites allow owners to enable “Request to book” instead of “Instant Booking.” “Request to Book” is what most people do: the renter enters all of their info, then clicks “Request to Book.” The owner gets an email that someone wants to book, then goes to a messaging engine on the booking site to to ask the prospective renter questions such as where they are going, how many in their party, what experience do they have with an RV, etc. They can also negotiate pricing, etc. After that is over, then the Owner will either Accept or Reject the booking request. It would be VERY helpful to have that function on Aucapina. A couple of options I see:
Simple: make an option for “Request to Book” where the customer does not pay online in the booking process. They simply select the dates and amenities they want on the catalog page, then request to book. They still have to fill out name, email, contact info, but then the owner is just sent an email. From there they interact over email/phone, and the owner sends a custom quote manually from their preferred payment system.
Complex: the entire quoting system gets built into Aucapina, much like it is done in RVshare or Outdoorsy. On those sites, the renter goes ahead and enters their Credit Card info, and as soon as the Owner Accepts the rental, then the Card is charged. Communication could take place through a messaging plugin, or that part could be done offline, via email or phone. The only part that would take place on Aucapina would be Accepting or Rejecting the booking. Not sure how that would work with Woocommerce…
Thank you for your request. Unfortunately, it does not apply to free support but we added this request to our todo list. Please consider we are currently working on some other useful .
