How to extend the manager approval time for hotel booking

[chriswiles]

Would like to extend the manager approval time for hotel bookings.  Had an issue where a reservation was made the day of check in and the booking did not get approved in time and was automatically cancelled and was charged for cancelled reservation, but did realize it until a month later when the invoice came in.  Need to extend the time for a manager to approve the request.

[KevinD]

@chriswiles I want to make sure I understand exactly what happened. Was the user able to check in to the hotel or did the cancelation occur before they went to check in and when the traveler arrived, there wasn't a reservation? 

I'm reading up on this and from what I see for same day travel bookings, the approver only has 30 minutes to approve. I don't think this can be changed. Your company may want to discuss the current settings and how same day travel should be handled going forward. Maybe for same day travel, users must call the travel agency? I don't know, but sounds like something that might need a discussion.

Here is what found internally about same day travel:

Active Approval Configuration:

• If a user submits a trip within 24 hours of departure (or the pick-up/check-in time for non-air itineraries) and active approval is required, the system will process the booking as if the approval deadline is within 30 minutes to an hour of when the booking was submitted.
• Approver Action: Approver must approve the trip within this tight time window or else it can be automatically cancelled depending on the settings

Best Practices for same day travel / bookings that require Active Approval:

• Provide a user message (via configurable messaging/travel policy) warning users about the short approval window for same-day travel
• Consider preventing users from submitting same-day travel reservations altogether.
• Alternatively, consider switching to passive approval to avoid this scenario.