Complete one controlled booking from the public form to the administration record before allowing real guests to book.
Before you begin
Use future dates and a test room type with known capacity, inventory and price. Use a dedicated test email address and no real guest details. When testing an online gateway, use its sandbox or test mode and its published test credential.
Search and select a room
- Open
/search-availability/in a private browser session. - Choose a future check-in date and a later check-out date.
- Enter a guest count supported by the test room type.
- Select Search Rooms.
- Confirm the result preserves the dates and guest count and shows the expected availability and price.
- Open the room details and continue to booking.
Submit the booking
- Confirm the room, stay dates, guests, price lines and total.
- Enter the dedicated test guest information.
- Choose the configured test payment method.
- Accept required terms or policies.
- Select Book Now once.
- Complete the gateway payment step when the selected method requires it.
For Stripe and PayPal, the expected journey is Book Now → Payment → Booking Confirmation. Pay-at-hotel can proceed directly to confirmation because no online payment is required.
Expected result
The browser reaches a signed booking confirmation for the same booking. The confirmation shows the booking code, stay summary, price details, payment state and outstanding balance. Refreshing the page must not create a duplicate booking or charge.
Verify in WordPress
- Open Hotel Booking → Bookings.
- Find the booking code shown on the confirmation.
- Compare room, dates, guest count, currency, subtotal, discounts, services, tax, total, paid amount and balance.
- Confirm the booking and payment statuses match the selected payment method.
- Confirm the customer email was received and contains the same safe summary.
- Repeat the availability search and confirm inventory changed as expected.
Recovery
If the public page reports failure, do not submit repeatedly. Search the administration list for the booking code or test email first. For an online gateway, compare the gateway sandbox event with the booking payment state before retrying. Keep the failed record and redacted diagnostic evidence until the cause is understood; do not edit totals directly as a repair.