On Kampi almost every camper is on request. Here is how to tell a booking request from a confirmed booking, and why unpaid requests cancel after a few days.
You get the notification: someone wants your camper for the long weekend. You tell the family it is booked out, maybe you turn down a friend who asked about the same dates. Then three days later it is gone, cancelled, and you are left wondering what you did wrong.
You did nothing wrong. What you saw was a booking request, not a confirmed booking, and the two are not the same thing. Almost every camper on Kampi (395 of our 399 listed campers) runs on request, so if this has happened to you, it has happened to nearly every host here too.
A booking on Kampi happens in two steps, and the gap between them is where the confusion lives.
First comes the request. A renter picks your dates and asks to book. Nothing is locked in yet. They have not paid, and you have not agreed. This is the renter knocking on your door.
Then comes the confirmation. You approve the request, the renter pays, and only once that payment lands does it become a real, confirmed booking. That is the renter walking through the door with the rental fee in hand.
"A request is someone asking if the camper is free. A confirmed booking is someone who has paid to take it. Treat them differently." - JP Voogt, Kampi founder
You do not need to guess. Open the booking and look at the payment status:
If the payment still says pending, treat it as a maybe, not a yes.
When you approve a request, the renter gets a window to pay. If they do not pay inside that window, Kampi automatically cancels the request and frees your calendar again. Nobody cancelled on you out of spite, and you are not being messed around. The renter simply changed their mind or went quiet, and the system released your dates so the next person can book them.
That is the platform doing its job. An unpaid request left sitting on your calendar would block real, paying renters. Letting it fall away keeps your dates open for someone who will actually show up with the money.
Three habits will save you the disappointment:
"Do not braai the boerie until the money is in. An approved request is a promise, a paid booking is a deal." - JP Voogt
Once a booking is paid and confirmed, it is solid. More than 5,900 trips have already run on Kampi through exactly this flow, and the paid bookings are real money for real trips. Watch the payment status, hold your dates for the paid ones, and let the rest go.
Want to sharpen the rest of your hosting game? Have a look at our listing health score guide and the high season pricing guide to turn more of those requests into paid bookings.