Zi Yacht Booking – Yacht & Boat Charter Booking for WordPress

Hourly yacht and boat charter booking for WordPress, by Zaki International (https://engzaki.pro).

Product page: https://engzaki.pro/en/products/yacht-boat-charter-booking-wordpress

---

1. Overview

Zi Yacht Booking is for businesses that rent yachts, catamarans, speed boats, houseboats, self-drive boats and fishing boats by the hour. It covers the whole flow, from showing the fleet to the confirmed booking:

Part	What it does
Fleet grid	Cards with photo, badges, guests, minimum hours, length, inclusions, hourly price, instalment text and a flip "Specs" back face. Fully booked boats show an "Other dates" WhatsApp button.
Yacht Finder	Instant filters (group size, budget per hour, boat type) with a live result count and an empty state.
Price calculator	One boat: hours and guests steppers, optional date (applies weekend / seasonal rate), total, per-guest estimate, instalments, Book now / Book on WhatsApp.
Price table	Boat, guests, minimum hours, price per hour.
Booking builder	Occasion → boat → date & start time → hours & guests → extras → details. Live total, deposit due now, instalment text, booking reference on submit.
Booking flows	Request: reference + prefilled WhatsApp confirmation + e-mails. WooCommerce: deposit or full payment on the order-pay page.
Admin	Bookings list (filters, bulk status, CSV), booking detail (status, reschedule, totals, notes), month calendar, manual bookings, iCal feed per boat.

2. Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or newer (tested up to 6.8)
• PHP 7.4 – 8.3
• MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+ (InnoDB recommended)
• Optional: WooCommerce 7.0+ for online deposits / payments (HPOS and cart/checkout blocks compatible)

3. Installation

1. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose zi-yacht-booking-1.0.0.zip → Install → Activate.
2. A new Yacht Booking menu appears. Six starter occasions are created (Birthday, Sunset trip, Family day, Proposal & anniversary, Corporate, Fishing).
3. Activate your license (section 5.8). Without it, the fleet, finder, calculator and price table still work; the booking builder shows a WhatsApp button to visitors and an explanation to administrators.

4. Quick start (10 minutes)

1. Settings → General: currency (AED by default), symbol position, then click Create a booking page for me.
2. Settings → Booking flow: your WhatsApp number in international format (digits only, e.g. 971500000000) and the notification e-mail.
3. Fleet → Add boat: title, description, featured image, then the Charter details, Pricing, Availability, Gallery and Booking status boxes. Tick the occasions the boat suits.
4. Extras → Add extra: e.g. Birthday cake – 150 – per booking; Jet ski – 250 – per hour – max quantity 3; Dinner – 150 – per guest.
5. Add the Yacht Finder block (or [ziyb_finder]) to your home or fleet page.

5. Configuration, screen by screen

5.1 Fleet (boat editor)

• Charter details: type (yacht, catamaran, speed boat, houseboat, self-drive, fishing boat), length (ft), capacity, cabins, crew (captain & crew / self-drive), inclusions (one per line), departure marina(s), badges (Most popular, Party pick, Sunset favourite, Family friendly, New, Best value) plus one custom badge.
• Pricing: price per hour, optional weekend price per hour, minimum and maximum hours, and price rules. A rule has a label, from / to dates (either can be empty), optional weekdays and a price per hour. The first matching rule wins; otherwise the weekend price applies on weekend days; otherwise the hourly price.
• Availability: buffer between charters (empty = global setting), blackout dates (YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DD..YYYY-MM-DD, one per line), links to the boat's calendar and iCal feed.
• Gallery: choose several images; they appear as a swipeable strip on the boat page.
• Booking status: Available, Fully booked (card stays visible with a badge, booking disabled, "Other dates" WhatsApp button), Hidden (removed from the website).

The single boat page automatically gets the gallery, badges, specs, the price calculator and – if no booking page is selected – the booking builder with the boat preselected. Turn this off with add_filter( 'ziyb_single_auto_content', '__return_false' );.

5.2 Extras

Price, unit (per booking, per hour, per guest), maximum quantity (1 = on/off), emoji icon or featured image, the boats it is available on (none = all) and the occasions it is suggested for. The excerpt is the short description.

5.3 Occasions

Yacht Booking → Occasions. Each occasion has a name, description and emoji icon. Boats and extras assigned to the chosen occasion are listed first with a "Suggested" tag. "Just cruising" is always offered.

5.4 Bookings

• Status tabs with counts, filters (boat, date range, search on reference / name / phone / e-mail), sorting by charter date or received date, pagination.
• Bulk actions: mark as any status or delete.
• Export CSV exports the current filter (UTF-8 with BOM for Excel; cells that start with =, +, -, @ are escaped).
• Booking detail: full summary, customer with a one-click WhatsApp link, WooCommerce order link, status (with optional customer e-mail), reschedule (boat, date, start, hours – checked against other bookings and the buffer), total / paid amounts, internal note, delete.

5.5 Calendar

Month grid (respects Settings → General → Week starts on). Filter by boat to see that boat's blackout days striped. Each booking chip links to the booking; the "+" on a day opens Add booking prefilled. With a boat selected, the iCal export button gives the subscription URL.

5.6 Add booking

For phone / walk-in / WhatsApp bookings. Minimum notice and blackout dates are not applied, but the double-booking guard (including the buffer) is. Choose the status and whether to e-mail the customer.

5.7 Settings

Tab	Options
General	Currency code, symbol, symbol position, decimals, fleet URL slug, booking page (+ one-click creation).
Schedule	Start time every 15/30/60 min, whole or half hours, first and last departure (a last departure earlier than the first means after midnight), buffer, minimum notice, booking horizon, weekend days, global blackout dates.
Booking flow	Request or WooCommerce, WhatsApp number, notification e-mail, which e-mails to send, require e-mail, pending-request hold time, auto-complete, reference prefix, booking terms text + URL, rate limit.
Payments & instalments	Deposit or full payment, deposit %, instalment text on/off, number of instalments, provider names (e.g. tabby, tamara), show on cards.
Appearance	Accent, text on accent, card background, text colour, corner radius, Yacht Finder group sizes and budget steps.
Advanced	Schema.org on/off, names in iCal feeds, delete data on uninstall, shortcode reference.

5.8 License

Paste the key from your engzaki.pro purchase e-mail and click Activate. The page shows status, product, domain, expiry, updates-until date and last check. Deactivate on this site frees the activation so you can move the key. Local / staging hosts (localhost, *.local, *.test) validate without using an activation. The result is cached for 12 hours; if engzaki.pro cannot be reached, a previously valid license keeps working for a 7-day grace period.

6. Shortcodes and blocks

Shortcode	Block	Attributes
[ziyb_fleet]	Yacht fleet	type="yacht,catamaran", occasion="birthday", ids="12,15", limit="6", columns="1-4", finder="yes", title=""
[ziyb_finder]	Yacht Finder	same as fleet + groups="4,8,15,20", budgets="500,1000,2500"
[ziyb_calculator boat="ID"]	Boat price calculator	boat (defaults to the current boat page)
[ziyb_booking]	Booking builder	boat="ID", occasion="slug", title=""
[ziyb_price_table]	Charter price table	type=""

Links can preselect the builder: /book/?boat=123&occasion=birthday&hours=3.

7. How it works

Prices

total = hourly rate × hours + extras, where the hourly rate comes from the first matching price rule, else the weekend price on weekend days, else the base price. Per-hour extras multiply by hours × quantity, per-guest extras by guests. The browser shows the total live; the server recomputes everything on submit and stores the breakdown with the booking. Instalment = total ÷ count, rounded up to the currency's decimals.

Availability and the double-booking guard

Start times are generated between the first and last departure every time step. For each start the API returns the longest charter that fits before the next booking (minus the buffer). Every active booking (pending, confirmed, paid, completed) owns one row per 15-minute block of charter + buffer in {prefix}ziyb_locks, whose primary key is (boat_id, slot). An overlapping booking needs a row that already exists, so MySQL rejects the insert and the customer is asked to choose another time. Cancelling deletes the rows; re-activating a cancelled booking re-claims them (or fails if the time was taken).

Booking flow

1. The builder fetches a fresh nonce (pages can be cached) and posts to POST /wp-json/ziyb/v1/book (honeypot, minimum fill time, per-IP rate limit, terms check).
2. The booking is stored as pending with a reference like ZY-261009-K7Q2.
3. Request mode: the customer sees the reference and a Confirm on WhatsApp button with a prefilled summary; customer and admin get e-mails. Requests not confirmed within the hold time are cancelled automatically.
4. WooCommerce mode: an order with one line (deposit or full amount) and the booking meta is created and the customer goes to the order-pay page. Order processing/completed → booking paid (full) or confirmed (deposit) with the paid amount; cancelled/refunded → booking cancelled and time released. Unpaid orders are cancelled after the hold time.
5. Confirmed / paid bookings become completed after the charter ends (optional).

REST API

• GET /wp-json/ziyb/v1/slots?boat=ID&date=YYYY-MM-DD
• GET /wp-json/ziyb/v1/nonce
• POST /wp-json/ziyb/v1/book

Hooks (selection)

Filters: ziyb_is_licensed, ziyb_capability, ziyb_bookings_capability, ziyb_boat_types, ziyb_badges, ziyb_boat, ziyb_quote, ziyb_booking_summary, ziyb_whatsapp_text, ziyb_email_html, ziyb_schema_product, ziyb_single_auto_content, ziyb_update_url, ziyb_license_api_url. Actions: ziyb_booking_created, ziyb_booking_status_changed, ziyb_booking_rescheduled, ziyb_license_changed, ziyb_loaded.

Theming

All colours and the radius are CSS variables: --ziyb-accent, --ziyb-on-accent, --ziyb-surface, --ziyb-text, --ziyb-radius. The layout uses logical properties, so Arabic / RTL sites need nothing extra.

Data

Tables: {prefix}ziyb_bookings, {prefix}ziyb_locks. Options: ziyb_settings, ziyb_license_state, ziyb_version, ziyb_db_version. Boats, extras and occasions are normal WordPress content. Uninstalling removes tables and options only when Settings → Advanced → Delete all bookings and settings is ticked; boats, extras and occasions are never deleted.

8. Privacy

Customer name, phone, e-mail, notes and a salted hash of the IP address are stored in your database. iCal feeds leave names and phones out unless you enable them. Add the booking data to your privacy policy; the plugin does not send anything to third parties except the WhatsApp links the visitor clicks and the license check to engzaki.pro (key + domain only).

9. Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
Boat pages show 404	Settings → Permalinks → Save (flushes rewrite rules).
"No start times left" on every date	Check first / last departure, minimum notice, the boat's maximum hours (must be ≥ minimum) and that the boat is Available.
Builder shows only a WhatsApp button	The license is not active – Yacht Booking → License.
Customers do not receive e-mails	Install an SMTP plugin; WordPress' default mail is often blocked by hosts.
WooCommerce mode still sends requests	WooCommerce must be active; the currency code in Settings must match the store currency.
"Your session expired" on submit	A security plugin or CDN is blocking /wp-json/ziyb/v1/nonce; allow it and exclude it from caching.
Times look shifted	Set Settings → General → Timezone to a city (e.g. Dubai), not a UTC offset.

10. FAQ

Can I take only a deposit? Yes – WooCommerce mode with Deposit and a percentage. The rest is recorded as the balance on the booking.

Can a boat have different prices on holidays? Yes – add a price rule with the date range (and optional weekdays).

Can I block a boat for maintenance? Add blackout dates on the boat, or create a manual booking for the exact hours.

Can I translate it? English and Arabic ship with the plugin; use Loco Translate for others (text domain zi-yacht-booking).

Will an update overwrite my changes? Settings, boats and bookings are stored in the database and survive updates. Do not edit plugin files; use CSS variables and hooks.

11. Changelog

1.0.0 – First release.