Soft booking
A soft booking is a tentative reservation where a slot is held for a client but not yet confirmed or paid for. It is released if the client does not confirm by an agreed time. A confirmed, usually paid, reservation is called a hard booking.
Why soft booking matters
Soft bookings are everywhere in Indian service businesses. "Keep Saturday 4 pm for me, I will confirm tonight" is a soft booking. So is a decorator or photographer pencilling in a wedding date while the family decides. They are useful for genuine maybes and costly when the maybe never replies.
The cost is the bookings you turn away while the slot sits on hold. A soft booking that lapses on the morning of the appointment is close to a no-show. Give every hold an expiry, such as 24 hours, and tell the client clearly that the slot goes back on the page if it is not confirmed by then.
A booking page that takes payment at the time of booking turns soft bookings into hard ones by default. On Book A Sloth a booking is confirmed only when the client pays, so nobody can hold your time with a maybe. For the genuine maybes you want to protect, add a placeholder event in Google Calendar.
Example
A Goa event decorator holds 14 February for a couple who promise to confirm by Friday; when Friday passes with no payment, she releases the date to the next enquiry.
Related terms
Book A Sloth turns these into one link: a booking page with upfront payment over UPI, GST invoices and automatic reminders.