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Online booking that automatically feeds availability through to other booking sites?

Internet Marketing

Crofter Andrew started this discussion 16 years 2 months ago

Does anyone know of online booking software that can be used as a hostel's main booking system and that automatically feeds availability through to all the main online booking services such as hostelworld, hostelbookers, gomio, HI, etc? Updating availability on all these sites makes being on them all impossible for us. We have been able to use the Scottish YHA system up to know, which automatically fed through to HI and hostelbookers, but they don't want affiliates using their system anymore.

Can any other systmes do this? If it doesn't already exist, is there anyone out there interested in developing one?

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Scotch Argus

16 years

As far as I'm aware, no such software exists (Although someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I think it would require those booking engines giving access to their databases, which the currently don't do. We use backpack online, which does this for hostelworld, but no others. There's certainly been talk of building such a thing on here, but I don't think anything has been completed yet. SYHA hostels, which have their automatic updating of availability on SYHA website bookings used to have to allocate their beds for HW and HB manually - is this automatic now?

It's certainly a pain, especially if you put rooms on different systems, to have to manually update all the time.

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adamhenry

16 years

There's an Australian company that does this, something called "ezyrates", but I've had no luck in hearing back from them (maybe because I'm in Canada) - last thing I heard from them:

"This is just to let you know that I have not forgotten you but we have had some delays in getting the Hostel type portals loaded into Ezyrates. I expect that to be done by the end of this week so I'll let you know when it is ready and give you a month free trial so you can test the performance!"

got that about two months ago. Website is here http://www.online-int.com.au/ or at ezyrates.com

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Josh Hostels

16 years

There is a company called Siteminder in Australia that was trying to do something like this:
https://www.siteminder.com.au/

I was communicating with them last year, but haven't heard back from them so I don't know what the status on the project is.

OnLine Syatems (mentioned above) also make the Backpacker Facebook app and Charts Backpacker (property management software).

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Alexandra

16 years

Hi there,

there is one which is a property management system as well. It is called ASSD (www.assd.com) It works with a lot of interfaces to Hostelworld, gomio, expedia, Hotelbeds etc.

They sell the system through out the world.

So give it a try.

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adamhenry

16 years

I got really excited about that SiteMinder one for a moment there - their News page mentions something about 10% commissions for Expedia for their partners (as compared to Expedia's standard 25%). However, digging a little deeper it turns out that Expedia deal is only for Australia, and only for bookings made within 28 days of arrival. I noticed SiteMinder does HostelBookers and VIP Backpackers, but didn't see HostelWorld.

I'd be interested to find out whether ASSD can offer their internet distribution services independent of their software.

Anyone else with any leads?

Much appreciated!

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Crofter Andrew

16 years

Thanks for the useful leads. I'm following up on them and will let you all know what I find out. :)

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Alexandra

16 years

Have you had a look on Rate Tiger (www.ratetiger.com) yet?
That one might be interesting for you too.

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Scotch Argus

16 years

I've had a look at a few of these, and it doesn't really make it clear what booking engines they support. Siteminder mentioned hostelbookers. I am only guessing, but isn't it the case that any booking engine would have to open up its engine to the outside software to allow integration to happen? As I understand it Hostelworld don't do this, as they are promoting their own front desk software, and allowing other software providers to access it would only hinder their own product. And given that hostelworld have a huge chunk of the online hostel bookings market, this is going to make it very difficult for any front desk software to make allocations occur automatically, other than if updating availablity is done manually at the hostel.

I'm no expert on this, and would be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong.

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aboriginalhostel

16 years

As I understand it Hostelworld don't do this, as they are promoting their own front desk software, and allowing other software providers to access it would only hinder their own product.

It is indeed another "Catch 22". However, Backpack Online (BPO) is a free software, so it would not affect their software sales as they do not make any money on it.

IMHO it is rather their market defending strategy. As they have BPO they can claim the incompatibility issue but it is rather for checking hostel behaviours and refuse to share their market with other engines (multiple booking allocations).

And given that hostelworld have a huge chunk of the online hostel bookings market, this is going to make it very difficult for any front desk software to make allocations occur automatically, other than if updating availablity is done manually at the hostel.

I think it could be tricked out. You only have to convince it's competition (Hostelbookers, Gomio, Hostelsclub, etc) to use such feature so they would have constant availabilities (instead of allocating n beds to one engine, you could allocate it to several engines, if those beds are sold, then you could increase the multiple allocations against HW's fixed allocations) which would partially solve the chicken or egg paradox. Then all you have to do to raise the automatic allocations against the manual allocations, betting how many beds you can sell on both sources. This case HW have to give in or they risk losing the market.

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Scotch Argus

16 years

It is indeed another "Catch 22". However, Backpack Online (BPO) is a free software, so it would not affect their software sales as they do not make any money on it.

IMHO it is rather their market defending strategy. As they have BPO they can claim the incompatibility issue but it is rather for checking hostel behaviours and refuse to share their market with other engines (multiple booking allocations).

Agree with this - their offering of BPO as a free software is to encourage hostels to list as many beds as possible on HW as it's convenient for the hostel. This I imagine is the thinking behind the commission free booking page for the hostels site. I doubt they'll be in any hurry to share their market with other engines.

I think it could be tricked out. You only have to convince it's competition (Hostelbookers, Gomio, Hostelsclub, etc) to use such feature so they would have constant availabilities (instead of allocating n beds to one engine, you could allocate it to several engines, if those beds are sold, then you could increase the multiple allocations against HW's fixed allocations) which would partially solve the chicken or egg paradox. Then all you have to do to raise the automatic allocations against the manual allocations, betting how many beds you can sell on both sources. This case HW have to give in or they risk losing the market.

I can see how that might happen - I doubt HW will be dominant forever - things change in any market - but even getting all the BEs you mentioned to co-operate might be difficult. I know nothing about the technicalities of doing this. But if every BE allowed multiple allocations I'd imagine that BEs would be springing up all over the place

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