WhatsApp reservations and booking confirmations
Endelir takes reservation enquiries on WhatsApp, collects the details a booking needs, and sends the confirmation, the reminder and any change on one thread. Most reservations start with a question — is Friday free, do you have a room for two nights, can six of us come at eight. Endelir collects the details that question is missing, keeps them on one thread, and sends the confirmation and the reminder once the booking is real.
The booking is agreed in the chat and lives nowhere else
A reservation enquiry almost never arrives complete. It says "Friday evening?" and leaves out the party size, or asks for a room without dates. Someone answers, asks two more questions, and by the time the booking is settled the details are spread across a chat that only one person can see.
What follows is the expensive part. The confirmation is typed by hand or forgotten. Nobody sends a reminder the day before. A guest who wants to move to Saturday writes back to the same chat and the change never reaches the diary, so the table is held for a night nobody is coming.
Collect the details, confirm from your own diary, then keep the thread
A chat flow asks for the things a booking cannot go ahead without — the date, the time, how many people, which branch — and writes each answer onto the contact record rather than leaving it in the conversation. The request reaches your shared inbox with those details attached, so whoever picks it up is not reading back through the chat to work out what was asked for.
Endelir does not hold your availability. It has no calendar and manages no tables, rooms or slots, so the check against what is actually free happens in your own diary or reservation system — by a person looking, or by a flow step that calls your system and brings back an answer. Once the booking exists there, the confirmation, the reminder and any later change all go out on the same thread.
How it works
- 1 The enquiry arrives Someone writes to your business number asking about a date — from an ad, your website, a QR code on the table, or the number they already had.
- 2 A flow asks what is missing Date, time, party size and branch for a restaurant; check-in, check-out, guests and room type for a hotel; date, activity and participants for a tour.
- 3 The answers are saved Each answer is written onto the contact record, so the request arrives in the inbox complete instead of scattered through a chat.
- 4 Availability is checked where it lives A person checks your diary or reservation system, or a flow step calls your own URL and brings the answer back into the chat.
- 5 The booking is confirmed Once the reservation actually exists in your system, the confirmation goes out with the date, time, reference and anything the guest needs on arrival.
- 6 A reminder goes out before the day A wait step in the flow counts down to the day before and sends an approved template with the time and the address.
- 7 Changes come back to the same thread A move or a cancellation is a reply, not a phone call. Your team updates the diary and answers in the conversation that is already open.
What this looks like in practice
A restaurant takes most of its bookings on WhatsApp and used to lose the details in a chat on the manager's phone. Now a flow asks for the date, the time, the number of people and which of its two branches, and saves each answer against the contact. The request lands in the shared inbox already complete.
The host still checks the real book — Endelir does not know which tables are free — and confirms in the same conversation. A wait step sends a short reminder the afternoon before with the time and the address. When a party of six drops to four, the guest replies to that reminder, the host changes the book, and the thread carries the whole history for the next time they call.
What can happen next
Works across businesses
What to know before you set it up
While a customer is writing to you about their booking, you can answer freely — there is a service window for exactly that. Starting the conversation yourself, or answering after that window has closed, uses a message template Meta has approved in advance. A confirmation or a reminder that carries only the facts of a real booking is normally written as a utility template, though Meta decides the category when you submit it. Endelir keeps track of which situation a conversation is in.
An offer is a different message. "Your table for four on Friday at eight is confirmed" and "book again this month and save on wine" are not the same thing, and the second one needs a marketing template and a customer who has opted in. Keep them separate rather than tucking the promotion inside the confirmation. And remember what Endelir does not do: it holds no calendar and no inventory, so a booking is only as reliable as the system your team checks it against.
What to measure
- Reservation enquiries received
- How many reach a confirmed booking
- Time from first enquiry to confirmation
- Confirmations and reminders sent
- Changes and cancellations handled in the thread
- Bookings where nobody arrived
- Repeat bookings from the same contact
Related
Questions people ask
Can customers make a reservation through WhatsApp?
They can start one, and in most businesses that is the whole of it. A chat flow collects everything the booking needs — the date, the time, how many people, which branch — and saves the answers onto the contact record so the request arrives in your inbox complete. What Endelir does not do is decide whether the slot is free. There is no calendar inside it. Your team confirms against your own diary or reservation system, or a flow step calls that system and brings the answer back into the conversation. Once the booking exists on your side, the confirmation goes out on the same thread.
What information should a reservation workflow collect?
Only what the booking cannot go ahead without. For a restaurant that is usually the date, the time, the party size and which branch. For a hotel it is the check-in and check-out dates, the number of guests and the room type. For a tour operator it is the date, the activity and the participant count. Each question in the flow writes its answer to a field on the contact record, so you decide the list. Keep it short — every extra question is another chance for someone to stop replying halfway through, and anything you can ask on arrival does not need asking now.
Can a booking confirmation be sent automatically?
Yes, once the booking is genuinely confirmed on your side. A flow can send an approved template carrying the date, the time, the reference, the address and whatever the customer needs on the day, and it can attach a document such as a voucher or a map. The order matters: the reservation should exist in your system first, because a confirmation sent before that is a promise nobody can keep. Where your booking system can call Endelir's API, the confirmation is triggered by the booking being created rather than by a person remembering to send it.
Is a booking confirmation a Utility message?
A message that confirms a real reservation and carries only the facts of it — date, time, reference, location, what to bring — generally fits the utility category, and so does a reminder about that same booking. The moment you add a discount, an upgrade offer or an unrelated promotion, the message is doing marketing and has to be treated that way: a marketing template, and a customer who has opted in. Meta decides how a template is categorised when you submit it, so write the confirmation as a confirmation and put the offer in its own message.
Can customers change or cancel a reservation in the conversation?
Yes, and it is one of the better reasons to run bookings this way — a change is a reply rather than a phone call at a busy moment. The request lands in the shared inbox on the thread that already holds the original booking. Your team updates the reservation in your own system, then answers. Do it in that order: reminders and later messages read from the details you hold, so a change that never reached the diary produces a reminder for a booking that no longer exists.
How do you prevent double bookings?
Endelir does not prevent them, and no honest answer says otherwise. It holds no calendar, no table plan and no room inventory, so it cannot know that Friday at eight has already gone. Availability has to come from your reservation system or your diary, and the confirmation should follow the booking being made there rather than the other way round. Two things make that workable in practice: a flow step can call your system and bring a live answer into the chat before anyone promises anything, and every request arrives in one inbox with a visible owner, so two people are not quietly confirming the same slot to two customers.
Can I collect a deposit through the conversation?
You can send your own payment link into the chat, in a template that carries the booking reference alongside it. Endelir does not take the payment and is not told when it lands, so it cannot mark the reservation as paid on its own. Your payment provider confirms the money, your system records it, and your team or your system updates the booking from there. Never treat a link that has been sent as a deposit that has been received — that is the mistake that gives away a held room.
Move from “is this available?” to a confirmed booking in the same conversation.
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