Report

Booking Engine or Own Website?

Front Desk Operations

uktrail started this discussion 14 years 9 months ago

What do hostels feel about methods of receiving bookings online? Are you happy with the booking engines, or would you prefer to receive more through your own website?

The advantage of your own website is that you pay little or no commission. The limitations are that you have to display your vacancies on your website, and also you have to have a booking method for guests.

Display of vacancies is very valuable to potential guests. If a guest wants to visit several places, it is of great help for him/her to establish in one go what vacancies there are in all those places, and plan his/her route accordingly.

To display your vacancies on your website (and others that are willing**) is pretty easy. If you use the Open Door* system, it is almost automatic. If you use a different front desk system such as a spreadsheet, you may have to go through a few manual stages to generate a table of vacancies and then transmit it. Whatever method you use, I will be happy to advise on the process.

To get bookings from visitors to a website, many hostels invite a telephone call or email. They may ask for credit card details over the phone or email, but this could have security problems. Or they might simply trust that people will honour their booking or inform them if they cancel.

Do you take bookings through your website, and if so, what methods do you use?

* www.uktrail.com/opendoor/ Reservation and bednight system for small hostels
** www.uktrail.com Hostels throughout Britain

Comments

Report

TheEnterprise

14 years

I certainly would prefer to receive bookings through my own web site and avoid booking fees from booking engines; but I am afraid my web site might not provide enough on-line exposure (as compared to a booking engine). When I open my hostel, I think I will initially go that way (bookings through my own web site), at least to give it a try.

In the worst case, I expect the hostel to have an occupancy low enough such that any backpacker requesting a reservation (via e-mail) will find rooms available. The chances of them coming and finding that there is no room will be very slim. No-shows will not be a problem if we have low occupancy (or plenty of available beds/rooms), anyway.

If the hostel cannot survive only with business generated through its web site, (or if business is good, but could be improved, and we can afford booking fees) we will register with a booking engine.

Report

justin

14 years

I own a website where we offer a free reservation booking engine that you can embed as a widget in your website:
http://www.moonicorn.com/

You can see a quick getting started video here:
http://www.moonicorn.com/home/demo

I'm curious what people think about it?

Report

Milequality

13 years

We definitely are talking about two different things:

1. What you call a booking engine is in fact a booking portal or a virtual/online travel agency (Expedia, booking.com, etc...)

An hotel will choose to work with them if he needs to increase number of visits and bookings. It works great and gives you a lot of exposure but those companies normally ask 10-15% comission per reservation.

2. Recieving booking on you own website. In this case you will use an embedded booking engine:

An hotel will choose to work with them for many reasons:
- Show availability on you own web
- Reduce Email and phone calls
- Make it easy for the client to book
- Recieve bookings 24/7
- Never loose a reservation

the good thing about this is that some providers gives you the booking engine comission free so you only pay a fix price.

In my hotel we use Webreserv reservation system, it works great and it is cheap. You should have a look at it http://www.webreserv.eu

I hope that will help

Report

Chrisibm

13 years

If you are looking for commission free booking, inbed.me provides a customizable, personalized webpage (http://inbed.me/online) that you can refer travelers to and receive bookings, 100% commission free. This link could be placed on your hostel's homepage and you would not pay any commissions on any traveler that books through the link. You can also use your existing software with inbed.me to keep you availability and rates up to date. For more info, click the following link, http://inbed.me/welcome.

-Chris

Report

Chrisibm

13 years

Inbed.me allows for no fee booking. When you sign up, you get a customizable link for your hostel and any bookings made through this link are 100% free. You could use this link on your hostel's website and, BOOM, commission free booking on your site. For more info, click this link, http://inbed.me/online.

-Chris

Report

HostelOffice

12 years

Having a booking engine in your own website that processes commission free direct bookings has many advantages.

1. You can put any text you want. So you can inform guests about balcony's, views, in room wifi, art in the rooms, etc

2. It will sell your one room type as many room types without the risk of double bookings. eg room 1 is a room with a Double Bed and a Single Bed in it. Then your booking engine can sell that room as a Single, Twin, Double or Triple bed room. Agents that charge commissions can not do that. They sell the room as one type only so you do not get as many bookings or as profitable bookings as you normally could.

3. If your hostel is full then the website booking engine can promote your other hostels or hostels you partner with.

4. You can sell tours and events from your website booking engine applicable to the same date the guest searched. People can select additional extras for free like car parking, baby cotts etc.

5. One direct commission free booking from your website can be equally profitable to 2 or 3 commissioned bookings from an agent.

6. Having a website booking engine that shows 100% accurate availability is the fastest way to inform phone and email enquiries of prices and availabilities.

7. You can network hostels so if your website Search Engine presence is low on Google then all the hostels in the network strengthen each other. See an example here https://secure.dormproject.ch/online/banner.php?var=3&lang=en&search=1&target=new&hostel=besthostelcity,best_hostel_old_town,best_hostel_skeppsbron,accoirine88

You can get such a booking engine here www.hosteloffice.com and a film about the booking engine is shown here.

Search form

Report 'Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Report 'Re: Booking Engine or Own Website?'?

Join the world's largest community of hostel professionals.

Check Your Email