Instant Confirmation vs On-Request Bookings
On-request costs you twice, and the two costs multiply rather than add.
Instant confirmation means the platform confirms a booking to the traveller immediately, against your live availability, with no approval step from you. On-request means they wait while you decide.
Everyone knows the second converts worse. What is less obvious is that it costs you a second time, in a way that compounds — and that switching to instant is only safe if one other thing is true first.
What it means on the platforms
The major marketplaces all support both, and the setting sits on your product rather than on the platform. So the answer to whether Viator or GetYourGuide sends instant confirmation is: they will, if you have configured your product for it.
From the traveller's side the difference is stark. Instant produces a ticket and a confirmation before they have closed the tab. On-request produces a message saying somebody will get back to them — which, to a person standing in a city deciding what to do tomorrow, reads as maybe.
Why on-request costs twice
First cost: conversion. People abandon bookings that require waiting, and the ones most likely to abandon are the ones booking closest to travel — precisely the demand that would otherwise fill your gaps.
Second cost: visibility. This is the one that gets missed. GetYourGuide's own supplier documentation names conversion rate as a ranking input — so a product that converts worse is also shown less often. The published ranking factors are covered here.
The two multiply rather than add. An illustration, with figures chosen to show the shape rather than to claim typical performance:
- A thousand impressions converting at 3% — 30 bookings
- Conversion falls to 2% on the same impressions — 20 bookings, a third down
- But weaker conversion also costs ranking. Impressions fall 30% too — 14 bookings
A third off conversion plus a third off visibility is not two thirds of the damage. It is more than half your bookings gone. Again, those are illustrative numbers — but the multiplying relationship between them is structural, and it is why on-request products tend to fade rather than simply underperform.
Why operators use it anyway
Not stubbornness. On-request usually exists for a reason, and the reasons divide into two kinds — one legitimate, one worth fixing.
Legitimate: you genuinely cannot commit without checking. A private tour needing a specific guide who may already be booked. A product depending on a third-party supplier's availability. Anything where capacity is decided case by case rather than counted.
Worth fixing: on-request as a safety net. Operators who do not trust their own availability numbers use manual approval as a last line of defence against selling the same place twice. That is a rational response to a real problem — but it treats the symptom, and it is expensive, because you are paying for it in bookings you never see.
The risk nobody mentions
Before switching everything to instant, the honest counterweight — because most advice on this stops at "instant converts better" and leaves you to discover the rest.
Instant confirmation means the system commits on your behalf, automatically. If the availability figure behind it is stale, you have not removed the manual check — you have automated a promise you cannot keep.
Which makes real-time availability the precondition rather than a nice extra. On a manual or one-way setup, availability drifts between updates, and instant confirmation turns that drift into confirmed bookings you will have to cancel — connection type decides whether that drift exists at all.
So the sequence matters. Fix availability accuracy first, then switch to instant. Doing it the other way round produces exactly the outcome the on-request operators were afraid of, which is how instant confirmation acquires an undeserved reputation for being risky.
Cut-off rules that make it safe
Your cut-off and your confirmation setting are one decision, not two. The cut-off defines the window in which instant booking is allowed at all.
- Derive it from real preparation time, not from caution — the working-backwards method is here.
- Set it per product. A walking tour and a boat trip needing catering do not share a constraint, and a single global setting saddles everything with your most complicated product's needs.
- Consider a hybrid — instant confirmation up to a point, on-request inside it. That keeps last-minute demand available without committing you blind, and is a reasonable middle ground for products with genuine dependencies.
- Shorten it in peak season if you can, since that is when late demand is highest and when refusing it costs most.
The switching checklist
In order, because the sequence is the whole point:
- Confirm your availability is accurate in real time across every channel. If it is not, stop here and fix that first.
- Test the flow-back — cancel something and check the place returns to your channels on its own. Instant confirmation against inventory that never comes back is the worst of both worlds.
- Work out your true preparation time per product and set cut-offs from it.
- Switch one product first, ideally a well-understood one, and watch it for a few weeks.
- Check what actually happened — bookings, and specifically whether any had to be cancelled by you.
- Then roll out, leaving genuinely case-by-case products on request.
Expect the change to take time to show up. Ranking effects compound over weeks rather than appearing the next morning, so judge it over a month at minimum.
How Travelity fits
The precondition above is the thing Travelity exists to provide: availability held once and shared live across connected channels and your own booking widget, so a place sold anywhere closes everywhere before the next traveller sees it. That is what makes instant confirmation a reasonable thing to offer rather than a gamble. Trials run 21 days with no card if you want to test the flow-back yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Do Viator and GetYourGuide send instant confirmation?
They can, but only if your product is set up for it. Instant confirmation means the platform confirms the booking to the traveller immediately against your live availability, with no approval step from you. If your product is set to on-request, the traveller waits for you to accept instead.
Why do on-request products perform worse on OTAs?
Two reasons that compound. Travellers abandon bookings that require waiting, so conversion falls. And because conversion rate is itself a ranking input on at least one major platform, a product that converts worse is also shown less often — so you lose a share of the people who see you, and then see fewer of them.
Is instant confirmation risky for tour operators?
Only without accurate real-time availability. Instant confirmation means a booking is accepted automatically on your behalf, so if the number behind it is stale you have automated a promise you cannot keep. With availability that updates the moment anything sells, the risk largely disappears.
When is on-request the right choice?
When you genuinely cannot commit without checking — a private tour needing a specific guide, a product depending on a third-party supplier, or anything where capacity is decided case by case. Using it as a safety net against overbooking is a different matter, and usually a sign the availability problem should be fixed instead.
How do cut-off times affect instant confirmation?
They set the window in which instant booking is allowed at all. A long cut-off removes you from last-minute demand entirely, while a very short one only works if your availability is accurate to the minute. The two settings have to be decided together rather than separately.
Bottom line
On-request does not merely convert worse — it converts worse and is then shown less often because of it, and those two effects multiply. That is why on-request products tend to quietly disappear from results rather than simply underperforming.
But fix availability accuracy before switching, not after. Instant confirmation on top of a stale number is not an improvement, it is an automated promise you cannot keep — and it produces precisely the disaster that made you cautious in the first place.
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