Default occupancy and length of stay
The input bar calendar in your booking engine loads with a default of 1 night and 2 guests.
You can change this in the extranet so that if no dates are provided by the guest, your booking engine default loads a custom number of nights and guests.
For example, if you always have a minimum length of stay of 2 nights, then you can change the calendar default length of stay to 2 nights. This means that the booking engine will always load 2 nights.
To set up your default occupancy and length of stay:
In your extranet, go to Setup
Click the Property tile
Under the General tab, you will find Default Booking Engine Search Criteria towards the bottom
Change the values as required, and click Save
Room type calendar
The room type calendar shows the availability of a particular room type if there are no rates available. If your guest is particularly interested in a specific room type and it is unavailable, they will be able to search for the next available dates.
The room type calendar is displayed to your guests regardless of whether you have the "hide unavailable rates" option enabled or not.
Please note: This feature is enabled for all properties by default.
How to reach the Customisation page
From the Customisation page you can change how the booking engine displays to guests.
To reach the Customisation page:
Click the Setup tab
Click the Property tile
Under Customisation tab, you can configure how the booking engine is displayed, you can find more information on each option in the other sections of this article
Availability Display
Hide unavailable rates
This will hide rates from view that are not available to be booked over the given date range. If this box is not checked , we will display a full list of all your rates regardless of restrictions or availability.
Rooms that have no available rates (or with all rates blocked by a restriction) will still be visible, however the rates will not be listed , instead the rooms will have a room type calendar where the guest is able to browse the next available dates for that particular room type.
Alert guests when inventory is __ Rooms or less
If you set an amount of rooms for this option, the booking engine will alert guests when the availability of any room type is that number or lower. For example, “Hurry! Only 3 Left”
Alert guests when release period is __ days or more
If you set an amount of days for this option, "Early Bird Special" will be displayed on the booking engine next to the rates when their release period is equal or greater than this threshold
Hide public rates when a Promo Code is applied
If you check this option, when a guest uses a promotional code in the booking engine, they will only be able to see room rates on which the promotional code has an effect.
Legacy Availability Display options
These options are only available in the older version of the Booking Engine:
Show availability: check this box to display room availability on the booking engine. Additionally, you can configure the following urgency messages:
" Book now, pay later" message : This message will be based on whether you have a deposit set up or not. If you have no deposits set up, then it will automatically show "book now, pay later".
Hide rack rate: r room 's "rack rate" is the highest rate you would charge for that room. You can choose to show the rack rate (allowing guests to compare the current rate with the rack rate) or you can Hide rack rate. When the Hide rack rate box is not checked , your customers will see both the current rate and the rack rate in the availability grid. When the Hide rack rate box is checked , your customers will only see the current rate in the availability grid, and the currency sign replaces the rack rate
Enable "Hot Deals"?: check this option to display nights as hot deals on the booking engine calendar and in the search results. Enabling hot deals will add the Hot Deal option in the inventory grid from where you can apply the setting to your inventory
Hide Unavailable Rooms: Hides rooms for which there are no available rates
Enquiry Settings
Guests can send you enquiry emails through your booking engine, which will be received to the email address which you can set under Property > General > Email Contacts.
Please be aware that we have no control as to who uses this form or as to what information they send through.
Enquiry Only
Checking this option does not allow guests to book rooms using the booking engine. Guests are instead required to send an enquiry email in order to book rooms. This option is for those hoteliers that prefer using the booking engine only as a system for guests to look at the available rooms without booking. Most properties should leave this option unticked.
Legacy Enquiry Settings option
This option is only available in the older version of the Booking Engine:
Accept enquiries: Check this box to accept guest enquiries. If unchecked, guest will not be able to send enquiries.
Enquiry Text: Filling this field allows you to have additional text to be displayed above the enquiry form.
Maximum of 255 characters.
Checkout/Guest Details
When a guest books with the booking engine, name and e-mail address are always collected. From this section of the Customisation page you can also select any additional information you wish to collect at payment. The fields you select will be mandatory in order for the guest to complete the booking (although checkmarks can be left unchecked).
Require guest phone number
Select this option if you want your guests to provide their phone number in the Guest Details section of the booking page.
Require guest address
Select if you want your guests to provide their address in the Guest Details section of the booking page.
Enable GDPR consent?
If you select this option, the booking engine will ask guests if they consent to receiving marketing emails (GDPR regulation).
When this option is ticked, you also need to write the "GDPR consent text" to be displayed in the GDPR consent checkbox.
Maximum of 170 characters.
Collect referral information?
Check this option if you want to collect referral information from your guests to learn more about the sources that lead them to your booking engine.
The following referral options appear by default: Facebook, Google, Internet, Magazine, Newspaper, Radio, Television, TripAdvisor.
You can further add an option to this list by using a pipe symbol “|”. Or you can delete options if you prefer.
By default, ‘Other’ will always be listed, allowing guests to type in their referral source .
Character limit including all the options is 255.
Your guests will be able to view all the options on your booking engine during checkout under the drop-down list "How did you hear about us"?
Include an optional custom field
Check this option and create a label to add an optional field on the booking engine to capture guest details
Legacy Checkout/Guest details
This option is only available in the older version of the Booking Engine
Newsletter available?
If you select this option, the booking engine will ask guests if they would like to receive a newsletter. Your guests will have the option to tick the checkbox "Would you like to receive the newsletter" before completing the booking.
The Booking Engine does not have any option to send newsletters. When a customer ticks this option, their answer will simply be recorded so that later you can export a report of all the guests that have ticked this option.
Maximum room occupancy
You can customise the maximum number of occupants shown in the Booking Engine’s occupancy selector drop-down menus.
Set up maximum occupants
In the drop-down menus, select the number of Maximum Adults, Maximum Children , and Maximum Infants that you permit in each room. (The value in each drop-down menu is set to 10 by default, with a maximum value of 20.)
Once configured, these maximum room occupancy values will display in the drop-down menus for Adults, Children, and Infants when customers search for a stay on the Booking Engine.
Note: customers cannot select an occupancy value greater than the maximum occupancy that you have set or the maximum occupancy of your largest room on offer.
Hide Children/Infants selector
If you want to only cater to single travellers or couples travelling without children, you can hide these options from the Booking Engine easily. From the dropdown menu to choose the maximum number of children or infants, select Hide infants selector and/or Hide children selector to hide the infants and/or children selector drop-downs from your Booking Engine search bar to have more control over the occupancy options by customising them to your guest’s demographics.
Maximum room occupancy includes adults, children & infants
By default this option is unticked.
If you tick the option "Maximum room occupancy includes adults, children & infants", then the Infants will be counted as general Occupants. What this means can be a little unclear, so below is an additional explanation of the ramifications.
All rooms have the following occupancy values: Maximum Adults, Maximum Children, Maximum Infants, Maximum Occupants.
Normally the "Maximum Occupants" indicates the maximum sum of Adults+Children that the room allows.
For example, if a room has Max 4 Adults, Max 2 Children, Max 2 Infants and Max 4 Occupants, it would mean that at most it allows the following combinations of Adults and Children:
4 Adults (4 Occupants) + 0, 1 or 2 Infants
3 Adults and 1 Child (4 Occupants) + 0, 1 or 2 Infants
2 Adults and 2 Children (4 Occupants) + 0, 1 or 2 Infants
However if the option "Maximum room occupancy includes adults, children & infants" is ticked, then the Max Occupants indicates instead the maximum sum of Adults+Children+Infants that the room allows.
The example above then would allow for the following combinations instead:
4 Adults (4 infant-including Occupants)
3 Adults and 1 Child (4 infant-including Occupants)
2 Adults and 2 Children (4 infant-including Occupants)
3 Adults and 1 Infant (4 infant-including Occupants)
2 Adults and 2 Infants (4 infant-including Occupants)
2 Adults, 1 Infant and 1 Child (4 infant-including Occupants)
Theme
You can select the primary colour for your booking engine in order to personalise according to your hotel's branding. This should be the more dominant colour. It colours buttons and other important page elements.
You can choose any colour using the corresponding html hexadecimal code. You can ask your web developer what html colour code to use, or you can use any third party html colour code pickers online to choose a colour and find out the corresponding hexadecimal.
Keep in mind that it might take some time for your colour to be applied, and your browser might have cached the previous colour, in which case it is advised to open your booking engine from an incognito window or another browser.
Legacy Theme options
The older version of the booking engine lets you select a pre-defined colour theme for your booking engine. You can choose from a range of predefined themes or enter your own custom theme colours using the corresponding html hexadecimal code (for Primary and Secondary Colour).