Add online bookings to your website

On 05/09/2013

In New and updated features

The more observant among you may have noticed that we added a new site content feature recently, and it's now time to let everyone in on it. It's a new site add-on, designed to handle online bookings right on your website, for renting or scheduling anything - and everything! - from rooms to bikes (and a whole lot of stuff in between). 

It's also one of the most popular feature requests we’ve received in the past: a way to help BnB and guesthouse owners you add a booking calendar to your website, with built-in booking features for your clients. If you need to add booking or reservation features to your existing website, or need to make a bed and breakfast website, its now a whole lot easier with the Booking add-on.

Website bookings made easy

To enable the Booking add-on, just head to the Add-ons > Booking menu of the site manager. Once enabled, you can get started right away creating your first rental (the thing people will book).

Each rental you create can be for weekly rentals (great for vacation or holiday letting), per-day or per-night rentals (day bookings for meeting rooms or whole-day equipment hires) or per-timeslot (for appointment scheduling).

You can easily define the number of simultaneous bookings possible for each rental, so you can simply create a single rental for handling 5 or 10 different rooms, or 50 individual bikes.
 

Easy seasonal pricing and booking blackout date set-up

Configuring rentals to handle seasonal pricing variations, booking blackout dates and opening hours is easy, and each rental has its own page on your site, with dedicated fields for listing equipment, a location complete with a map, detailed description and illustrative image.

Pricing is clearly displayed on an availability calendar for each rental, and the booking process for clients is simplified as much as possible, while ensuring you get all the details you need.
 

Add one-click optional extras

If you have more than one rental that varies in some way, like multiple rooms with different bed sizes, or bikes to rent with different colors, or want to offer extras to booking like sheets, cleaning fees or helmets, create one or more extras for your rentals.

Extras are linked to the rental, so for each one you can choose what kind of extras to add, and how to price them. Extras can be offered for free, for a fixed-price for the duration of the booking (like a one-off cleaning fee or fixed-price security deposit) or have variable pricing, that increases with the duration of the booking (like breakfast or on-site third-party security fees).
 

Choose the booking features you need

The website bookings add-on comes in two versions: a free version for publishing a single rental on your website at any one time, and a subscription version – BookingPRO - to publish as many rentals on your site as you’d like.

BookingPRO rentals can have multiple images to illustrate each one, and comes with built-in payment features for your clients. Configure payments for each rental for handling deposit-only or in-full payments. And if you enabling credit card payments (via PayPal), your clients will be able to complete the whole booking process right on your site, and pay online instantly.

Enable the Booking add-on for your site to test-drive it any time you’d like – it’s free! See our tutorial to find out more about how to add a booking calendar to your website.