Reservation States Explained
Once a booking becomes a reservation, it can sit in different states — held, confirmed, expired, or cancelled. This guide explains what each state means for you and what to do about it.
The states at a glance
| State | What it means for you | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Pending / optional hold | The room is held for the guest, but the booking is not final yet. Brixa shows this as Tentatively Booked. The hold usually has a time limit set in your PMS. | Confirm once payment or a guarantee is in place, under your hotel's process. Do not leave holds sitting: an unfinalized hold can expire. |
| Confirmed | The reservation is final. The guest has a firm booking and it counts fully in your occupancy and reports. | Nothing required beyond your normal pre-arrival routine. Verify the details match the accepted quote if you have not already. |
| Expired | A hold reached its time limit without being finalized. The room is back on sale and the guest no longer has a booking. | Check whether the guest still wants to stay. If they do, create a fresh booking — availability and price may have changed since the original quote. |
| Cancelled | The reservation was actively cancelled — by the guest, by your team, or by your hotel's policy. The room is released. | Apply your cancellation policy (fees, refunds, deposit handling) and confirm the guest knows the booking is cancelled. |
Tentatively Booked in Brixa
While a hold like this is open, the quote's status in Brixa shows as Tentatively Booked. For hotels with automatic reservation creation, this happens on its own as soon as the hold is created in your PMS. Otherwise, create the hold yourself and then set the quote to Tentatively Booked in Brixa.
While tentatively booked, the guest sees a message that their reservation is being held, along with your payment instructions and the date the hold needs to be finalized by. Confirming the booking — in Brixa or in your PMS — closes out Tentatively Booked. If nothing happens before that date, the quote expires automatically, in step with the hold in your PMS.
Keep an eye on open holds
A hold is a promise with a deadline: if nobody finalizes it before your PMS's time limit runs out, it lapses and the room goes back on sale. A guest who believes they have a room may not, if a hold quietly expired. Make reviewing open holds part of your daily routine so nothing expires unnoticed.
Where to check the authoritative state
Once a reservation exists in your PMS, your PMS is the authoritative source for its current state. Changes made directly in the PMS — a manual confirmation, a cancellation at the front desk, a date change over the phone — live in the PMS. When in doubt, trust what the PMS shows.
Related reading
- From Accepted Quote to Reservation — how a reservation gets created in the first place
- Reservation Readiness — why some accepted quotes have not become reservations yet
- Quote Statuses Explained — where Tentatively Booked sits among every quote status
- Reservation and Sync Issues — what to do when a reservation does not appear where you expect it