Retreat schedules spa and wellness appointments against two things at once. One is a provider with a current certification for that service. The other is a room or station free for the whole treatment plus cleanup. Book from the front desk or the guest's Stay portal. A staying guest's treatment posts to the folio, and cancellation and no-show fees are set per service.
Wednesday, 2:15 in the afternoon. A guest who checked in Monday on a five-night stay is sitting by the river. A 90-minute massage has just opened up for Thursday at 1:00, because a different guest moved theirs to Friday. Half an hour later the massage is booked, and on Sunday morning it settles at checkout on the same bill as the site and the firewood.
None of that is complicated to want. It gets complicated the moment two people try to hold the same room, or the schedule offers a facial to a therapist whose certification lapsed in March. So the setup work is mostly about teaching the calendar what is physically possible at your property.
What does a spa need before the first booking?
Four things, and they stack in this order.
Rooms and stations. Each one is a bookable resource with a type. A treatment room holds one guest at a time. A nail bar might hold two chairs and be booked by seat rather than by room. Turnover minutes live here too, so a room stays held after a treatment ends for as long as a reset actually takes.
The service menu. Every service carries its own duration, price, and cancellation rule. Variants cover the same treatment at different lengths, and add-ons cover hot stones or a scalp finish that extends the booking. A 90-minute massage and a 60-minute massage are two lengths of one service, not two unrelated products.
Providers. Therapists, estheticians, nail techs, stylists. Each one carries certifications with expiry dates, and each service lists which certification clears a provider to perform it.
The link between them. A provider cannot be offered for a service they are not certified for. When a certification expires, they come off that service on their own, without anyone remembering to go turn them off.
CampGuide sets all of this up with you at onboarding, from your own menu and your own room list. What matters after that is what you can change yourself: a price, a new service, a new hire cleared for deep tissue. Same afternoon, without opening a support ticket.
Why does the schedule only offer some times?
Because one rule decides both what gets shown and what gets accepted. There is a single answer to “may this be booked,” and the availability screen and the booking action both read it. A time that appears on the board is a time that will book. Nobody picks 2:00, fills in a guest name, and then gets told 2:00 was never real.
Underneath, a treatment holds a provider and a room over different stretches of time. A facial with a 25-minute mask frees the esthetician partway through while the room stays occupied. A massage holds both for the full length, then holds the room 15 minutes longer for the reset. The database enforces this at the row level. Two bookings cannot land in the same room, even when two staff save at the same second from two devices.
The refusals are worth seeing in full, because they are the whole product:
- The provider is off shift at that hour.
- The provider is already in another room.
- The provider is not certified for that service, or the certification lapsed.
- The room is in use, or still in cleanup from the appointment before.
- The station is at capacity, when it holds more than one guest.
Try it below. Pick a service, pick a provider, and click a start time on any track.
Who books a treatment, and from where?
Three doors into the same schedule.
The front desk. Staff book on behalf of a guest, on the phone or standing at the counter, and can see which provider is on which room.
The guest's phone. A staying guest books from the Stay portal against their own reservation, without calling. This is where the Thursday 1:00 gets picked up while someone is sitting by the river.
Someone with no reservation. A day visitor, a local, or a customer of a spa that has no lodging attached at all. They pay by card at booking rather than posting to a folio, and the appointment carries its own cancellation rule. Today those bookings are taken at the desk, and CampGuide is building the guest-facing page for them.
All three run through the same booking core, so the rules that refuse a double-book cannot be different depending on which door someone came in through. One detail worth knowing on the public side: availability returns start times only, never which therapist or which room is behind them. Who is on shift is staffing information and stays inside the park.
Does the treatment go on the folio or on a card?
For a staying guest, on the folio. When the appointment is marked complete it posts as a spa service line on that reservation's bill. It sits next to the site charge and the store tab, and settles at checkout. Post the same treatment twice and the second attempt hands back the line that already exists instead of charging again. It also counts as revenue in reporting, so spa income shows up in the same numbers as everything else.
For a standalone booking with no reservation behind it, payment is taken by card at the time of booking through CampGuide Pay. The appointment is held while the payment goes through, and it turns into a real booking when the payment confirms, not when the guest's browser says it did. The distinction matters on a flaky signal at a trailhead parking lot.
Gratuity is entered by the guest and posts as its own tip line on the folio. For a standalone appointment with no folio behind it, a tip attempt is refused with a reason rather than being quietly swallowed.
What happens when a guest cancels late or does not show?
Each service carries three numbers you set: how many hours ahead a guest can cancel for free, what a late cancel costs, and what a no-show costs. A 90-minute couples massage that blocks two therapists can carry a stricter rule than a 30-minute manicure, because it is a different amount of labor to lose.
When someone does not show, the slot is released. That is the important half. An unattended appointment stops holding the room, so 2:00 goes back on the board and can be sold to someone else, while the fee covers the therapist's time. Writing a fee off is a manager action, so a front desk staffer having a rough conversation at the counter is not the person who decides.
Where this stops
Retreat is built for massage, facials, nails, salon services, soaks, and body treatments. Intake is a single capped free-text note. Service records are non-clinical by design, and the manager review queue is training feedback rather than clinical supervision.
Some services cross into clinical care: injectables, medical aesthetics, anything with a treating provider and a chart. Those carry records, licensing, and privacy questions. Take them to your counsel and your insurer before the first booking.
Retreat is switched on for a park by CampGuide, so ask for it when you want it live.
Worth checking before you take bookings
- Time a real reset, not an optimistic one, and use that as the turnover on each room.
- Put expiry dates on every certification when you load providers, so a lapse pulls someone off a service instead of surfacing at the counter.
- Set the cancellation cutoff per service, with the longest treatments carrying the strictest rule.
- Decide who is allowed to write off a no-show fee, and keep it above the front desk.
- Check that a service which frees the provider partway through, like a mask or a soak, is set up with processing time rather than one solid block.