Available While Away: Renting a Spot While the Owner Is Gone

When a long-term holder leaves for a stretch, you can release their exact spot to transient guests for that window — without touching their reservation or their billing. Here's how to set it up and what it changes on the map, timeline, and walk-through.

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Available While Away: Renting a Spot While the Owner Is Gone

Long-term holders leave. A boat owner cruises for three weeks, a seasonal RV guest drives home for the holidays, a tenant takes their gear off-site. While they're gone, their spot sits empty — and empty inventory is lost revenue. Available While Away lets you rent that exact spot to a transient guest for the window the owner is gone, without disturbing the owner's reservation at all.

This is the opposite of moving someone. You are not relocating the owner to a different spot. The owner keeps their reservation, their billing keeps running on its normal schedule, and they come back to the same spot. You've simply told the system "this spot is fair game for these dates."

When you'd use this

  • A slip owner is away for a few weeks and you want to offer the slip to transient boaters.
  • A seasonal campsite or RV guest is off-site for a stretch and the spot would otherwise sit idle.
  • Any case where a held asset is temporarily vacant and you'd rather earn on it than leave it empty.

If you actually need to move the holder to a different spot, that's a split, not an away window — see Calendar and Timeline Views.

How it works, in plain terms

You mark an asset on a reservation as "available while away" for a date range (or indefinitely). For that window:

  • The owner's reservation is untouched — same status, same billing, same everything.
  • The spot becomes bookable again in the booking wizard and on the map, even though the owner still holds it.
  • A transient who books it gets a completely separate reservation with its own payment. You're intentionally double-booking the spot for that window only.
  • Your walk-through stops expecting the owner to be physically there, and shows the transient instead (if one is booked).

When the window ends — or when you clear it — the spot goes back to being the owner's, and it stops showing as available.

Setting an away window

You can do this from two places.

From the reservation page

  1. Open the owner's reservation.
  2. Find the Available While Away panel (the orange one, above Map Placements).
  3. Click Mark Available While Away.
  4. Choose the asset, the Away from date, and either a Returns on date or check Away indefinitely.
  5. Save.

The panel now shows a line like "Boat Slip A‑12 — away from Jun 3 until Jun 24" with Edit and Clear buttons.

From the timeline

Right-click the owner's card on the timeline and choose Available While Away. Set the dates the same way. The card stays exactly where it is, but now wears a striped orange band over the away portion — that band is the "this spot is open" signal. The same menu item becomes Edit Available While Away once a window exists (it pre-fills the current dates), and End Available While Away clears it. You can also just click the striped band's label to open the editor — handy when a transient is already sharing the slot and covering the owner's card.

The Away from date defaults to today (you can't accidentally start a window in the past), and if you later drag the owner's reservation to new dates, the system notices when the move would cut off the start or end of the away window and asks whether to trim the window to the new dates or end it — then the striped band updates immediately instead of waiting for a refresh.

From the booking map

Open the spot's details on the booking map and click Mark Available While Away (it reads Edit Available While Away once a window exists). This opens the full manager for that reservation: every released asset is listed with its own edit and remove buttons, and an Asset picker lets you release additional assets on the same reservation — one set of dates each — without leaving the map. Add as many as you need; remove any of them the same way. (This matches what the reservation page can do, so it no longer matters which screen you start from.)

Indefinite is allowed on purpose. If you don't know when the owner is coming back, leave the return date blank and check indefinite. The spot stays open until you clear it.

What it looks like everywhere else

  • Booking map: during an away window, the spot draws in orange with an "Available While Away" label, and it's selectable for a new booking — even though you can still see the owner holds it.
  • Booking wizard: the spot reappears in the asset list for dates inside the window, so you can book a transient onto it normally.
  • Timeline: the owner's card keeps its place with the striped band over the away dates. Drag or create other reservations into that span as needed.
  • Walk-through (audit walk): the owner is flagged "away — not expected on site." If a transient is booked, the walker sees the transient as the occupant. If nobody's booked, the spot reads "Released — owner away."

Booking outside the window: the override

The system lets a transient booking start before or end after the owner's away window — but it won't do it silently. If a booking spills outside the released dates (or double-books a spot that has no away window at all), the wizard stops and asks:

This booking overlaps an existing reservation outside an Available While Away window. Book anyway?

Confirm to proceed, or cancel and fix the dates. This is a guardrail, not a wall — sometimes an owner extends their trip and you genuinely need to book past the original return date. The override is recorded on the reservation's history so there's a trail.

Common mistakes

  • Marking the wrong asset on a multi-asset reservation. Away windows are per-asset. If a reservation holds two slips and you release the wrong one, the right one stays blocked. Double-check the asset in the dropdown.
  • Forgetting to set a return date when there is one. Indefinite means the spot stays open until you remember to clear it. If the owner is back on a known date, set it — the system will close the window for you and warn anyone trying to book past it.
  • Treating it like a move. The owner does not vacate the system. Their billing keeps running. If you wanted to stop their billing or move them, that's a different action (a split, a checkout, or a cancellation).
  • Assuming the transient is capped to the window. It isn't — the system warns but allows an overstay. If the owner is coming back on time, make sure the transient's checkout lands on or before the return date.
  • Expecting the owner on the walk-through. Once a spot is released, your walkers won't be told to expect the owner. That's intentional — but make sure your staff understand the orange "away" flag so they don't report the owner as a no-show.

Clearing a window

Clear it from wherever you can see it: the reservation page panel, the timeline right-click menu, or the remove button next to the window in the booking-map manager. Clearing is a soft action — the spot immediately goes back to owner-only and stops showing as available, but the record of the window is kept for your history.

Seeing availability at a glance on the map

The booking map's toolbar has a Color by switch (Booking status or Asset type) and a Filter button. Use the filter to highlight available (empty) slots, or to show only certain booking states or asset types — so a busy marina map can answer "what's open?" or "where are my transient-eligible spots?" in one glance. A released-while-away spot reads as open here too. The legend in the corner always reflects whichever coloring you've chosen.