A common question when you activate a new Journey: will it also apply to reservations that are already in Bookboost, or only to bookings that come in from now on? There is one rule that answers this for every trigger, so you do not need to learn how each trigger behaves individually.

A Journey fires when its trigger event happens, provided the Journey is active at that moment. It does not look at when the reservation was created.

Bookboost does not go back over events that have already passed. An active Journey listens from the moment you activate it onwards, but a reservation created long before that is still perfectly eligible, as long as its trigger event has not happened yet.

For any reservation already in the system, ask one question: has this reservation's trigger event already happened, or is it still ahead?

This works for every trigger in the list, including ones tied to check-in and check-out times, cancellations, no-shows, reservation updates, space status, and double opt-in.

This is the part that catches people out. The same Journey can reach one existing reservation and skip another, because the two bookings sit at different points in their stay.

Take a Journey triggered After the estimated check-out time. A guest checking out on Friday will receive it. A guest who checked out last Tuesday will not. Both reservations existed in Bookboost before you activated the Journey. What differs is whether their check-out is behind them or ahead of them.

So "does this Journey apply to existing reservations?" does not have a single yes or no answer. Apply the test to each booking you care about.

After reservation was made is the exception. That moment is, by definition, already in the past for any booking that is already in Bookboost, so this trigger only ever picks up new bookings. Every other trigger describes something that may still be ahead of a given reservation, which is why they can and do fire for bookings that already exist.

Some events can occur repeatedly for the same reservation, such as a reservation being updated or a space changing status. These fire on the next occurrence after you activate the Journey. Occurrences that already took place do not count, even if they happened only minutes before activation.

The list contains both time-based triggers (Before and After the estimated check-in time, Before and After the estimated check-out time) and event-based ones (After guest checked in, After guest checked out). The estimated ones fire against the scheduled time on the reservation. The event ones fire when the action is actually recorded.

The test above applies to both, but be deliberate about which you pick. They will not always fire at the same moment for the same guest.

This is expected, and it does not mean the Journey is misconfigured. A Journey is not attached to a reservation in advance. It is evaluated at the moment the trigger event occurs. So for a guest checking out tomorrow, nothing will appear on that reservation today, because the Journey has no reason to act on it until check-out happens.

Before assuming something is wrong, check that the trigger event has actually passed. If it has passed and the message still did not go out, contact support with the reservation and the campaign name.

Because most triggers do reach existing bookings, a Journey can overlap with a Broadcast you already sent to the same guests. If that is a risk, add the Received Previous Campaigns filter to your audience, select the campaign you already sent, and tick Exclude selected. Those guests then drop out of the audience regardless of what the trigger does.

For the full pattern of covering both current and future bookings, see Reach current and new bookings for a one-off event.

Open Talk to Us in the left menu of the platform, or email support@bookboost.io.