When setting trip dates on a new booking, a draft, or an existing booking, you can see which guides are free on those dates and pre-select the guides you want. This is useful while you're talking with a client by phone or email:
A client asks for a specific guide — Check whether that guide is free, already booked, or not eligible for the experience, and pick them right away.
A client isn't sure how many people are coming — See how many guides are free on a given day. For example, if two guides are available and each guide can take two clients, you can accommodate up to four people.
Check Guide Availability
Open the date window:
New booking — Click New booking, then under Trip 1, click Add experience and select the experience.
Draft or existing booking — Open the booking, click Edit, then click the trip date on the experience row.
Under Dates, click the dates on the calendar, or type them into Start date and End date.
Set Persons to the number of people on the trip.
Under Time & duration, click a time window for each date.
Under Guide availability, click a guide's cell for a date to pre-select them (optional).
Click Select.
The Date Window
The window opens as Select Dates when you first add an experience, and shows Edit Dates once dates are set. It's split into sections: Dates, Persons, Time & duration (for experiences with set times), and Guide availability, which is optional and shows how many days you've selected. You can pick different dates or ranges to compare availability before you commit.
Days with no guide free are marked with a red ⚠ under the date, so you can spot open days before you pick.
Multi-day trips: click a start day and an end day. For a fixed-day experience, the trip length shows next to Customize start and end days, such as 3 fixed days (+1 before, +1 after). To run it over a longer range, see Stretch a Fixed-Day Experience Across More Days.
Persons starts at 0, and Select stays disabled until it's at least 1. Guide availability shows as soon as you pick a date, so you can check guides before you know the group size.
Time & duration: each date is listed with its day of the week, such as Sun, Nov 29, 2026. A ⚠ on a time window, and a "No guides available" warning beside the section title, mean no eligible guide is free for that slot. This section doesn't appear for full-day experiences or experiences without a set time, which are checked against the whole day.
No guide set up for this experience? If no guide has the experience turned on, a yellow notice appears at the top of the window instead of a warning on every day and time, for example No guides are eligible for Horseback riding. You can still book and assign guides later.
To make guides eligible, click Go to Experiences in the notice, then click Manage Guides. This is the quickest way to turn on an experience for several guides at once. To set a guide's payout rate for the experience at the same time, turn it on from Manage payout on the guide's row in the Guides list instead. See How to Set Guide Eligibility by Experience.
Until then, every guide in the grid is listed under Not eligible for this trip, and the column header reads, for example, No eligible guides of 10 available.
Reading the Guide Availability Grid
Each selected date gets its own column. The column header shows the date, the time window (All day for full-day experiences), and a count such as 5 eligible of 5 available: 5 guides are free, and 5 of them are qualified for the experience. When no eligible guide is free, the header turns red, for example No eligible guides of 6 available.
Guides are sorted into groups, and each group can be collapsed:
Available every selected day — Eligible guides free on every selected date.
Available some days — Eligible guides free on some dates but not others. Multi-day trips only.
Not available — Eligible guides with a conflict on every selected date. The cell shows the reason, such as Booked.
Not eligible for this trip — Guides who aren't qualified for this experience, labeled Ineligible. Their cells still show whether they're free.
Each date cell is colored to match the legend under the grid:
Available for the full window (green) — The cell reads Available.
Partially available (yellow) — A ✓ lists the times the guide is free, and an ✕ lists the times that conflict.
Unavailable (gray) — The cell shows the reason, such as Booked (already on another trip that day) or Blocked (the guide blocked that day on their calendar).
Pre-selected — Guides you've picked for that date.
A guide only counts as available when they're free for the entire trip window. For example, if a trip runs 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, a guide with another trip from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM shows as not available.
To find a guide, click the Guide column header to sort by name. If guide ranking is on for your organization, a Rank column appears and the list is sorted by rank. See Set Guide Priority for Automatic Guide Assignment.
Pre-Selecting Guides
Picked guides show a check in their cell and appear in the Pre-selected row at the top of the grid. When you edit an existing booking's dates, this row starts with the guides already chosen for those dates. Hover over a guide in this row to see their name and, if they aren't fully free, the reason.
The counter at the top shows how many you've picked out of the guides the trip needs per day, such as Up to 3 guides per day · 3 pre-selected. Once a day is full, the other cells fade.
To remove a pick, click the cell again or click the × on the guide's picture in the Pre-selected row. Clear selection removes every pick.
Picking a guide the grid flags asks you to confirm. The window shows the date and the reason in plain words, such as Not eligible for this trip, Booked all day, Blocked all day, or Only available at certain times. Click Pre-select anyway or Cancel.
Picks carry over. After you click Select, each unit in Per-unit details or Group details already has the guide you picked, and you can change it there. Units you didn't pre-select start as Unassigned, or AI-assigned if Guide Priority and Assignment is on. See Understanding Per-Unit Details When Creating or Editing a Booking or Understanding Group Details When Booking a Fixed-Day Experience.
Good to know
Buffer days don't affect guide availability. If a fixed-day experience has buffer days before or after the activity days, they widen the trip's date range, shown as with buffer days under the date fields, but the grid only shows the activity days.
Bookings with more than one trip: each trip has its own dates, persons, and experiences, so check guide availability separately for each one. Use Add a trip only when the same booking covers more than one trip.
Partner experiences don't show guide availability. Guides can't be pre-selected for a partner's experience.
To start over, click Clear dates.