Configure contact fields for your bookings – Explorates

Explorates lets you decide exactly what information your customers must provide when they book. You can require standard contact fields, ask custom questions, and even collect different information from the booking lead (the person paying) and from each participant in the activity.

This guide walks you through how.

Where to configure it

Open your product in the dashboard.
Click Contact information in the product sidebar.
You'll see two sections: Primary contact (the booking lead) and All participants (every person joining the activity).

Primary contact vs Participants

Section	When to use it
Primary contact	Information requested once per booking — billing email, phone number, marketing consent, how they heard about you, etc.
All participants	Information requested for each person taking part — dietary restrictions, passport number, date of birth for age-restricted activities, etc.

For each section, tick the boxes next to the fields that should be required at checkout. Leave them unticked if you don't need that information.

First name, Last name, Email address and Country are always required on the Primary contact — this data is essential for booking confirmation and email delivery.

Available standard fields

Identity: First name, Last name, Date of birth, Gender, Nationality
Contact: Email address, Phone number, Address, City, Postal code, Country
Travel documents: Passport number, Passport expiry date
Preferences: Language, Special requests (free text)
Marketing: How did you hear about us?, Opt in to marketing emails

Custom questions

If the standard fields aren't enough, add your own questions with the + Add a custom question button.

Write the question exactly the way your customer should read it (e.g. "Do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions?").
Custom questions appear right after the standard fields of their section.
They are required by default — the answer is captured as free text.
Add the question under Primary contact if you only need the answer once per booking, or under All participants if you want the information for every traveller.

What your customers see

The information you ask for is collected in two steps during the booking flow:

Step 1 — Primary contact

The booking lead fills in the standard fields you marked as required, plus any custom questions at the Primary contact level.

Example: First name, Last name, Email address, Country, and "How did you hear about us?".

Step 2 — Participants

For each participant on the booking, the customer fills in the participant-level fields and custom questions.

Example with 2 adults: each one individually answers "Do you have any allergies or dietary restrictions?".

If a product has no fields enabled at the participant level, this step is automatically skipped.

Where to find the answers

All answers are visible:

In the booking detail of your dashboard — Primary contact answers under the lead's card, per-participant answers under each participant.
In the confirmation email sent to your team (if enabled in your notification preferences).
Via the API / OCTO connector for any reseller distributing your product (provided they request the explorates/questions capability).

Best practices

Less is more. Every extra required field lowers your conversion rate. Only ask for what you genuinely need to deliver the experience.
Ask at the participant level only when it's relevant. Allergies, passport numbers, ages → per participant. Pickup address, marketing consent → primary contact only.
Phrase your custom questions clearly. Customers skim them. "Allergies?" works better than "Please indicate below any dietary restrictions, allergies or intolerances you may suffer from, including environmental sensitivities."
Test it yourself. Open your product's booking widget in a private window and run through a full booking to see what your customers see.

Need help configuring this for a specific product? Reach out to Explorates support and we'll walk you through it.