4. BOOKING
1.MANAGE BOOKINGS
If you've enabled users to submit online bookings DIRECTLY through your site, you can manage all your bookings under Bookings --> All bookings menu. You'll be able to see and sort them by all statuses. You can check or change the status of the booking:
- Pending User Confirmation
- Pending Admin
- Abandoned
- Confirmed
- Cancelled
TO ENABLE A BOOKING MANUALLY
Navigate to Bookings ==> All Bookings click ‘New Booking’ button at the top. Fill in the required information, and click RESERVE.
Next you'll be shown the Booking Details page, where you can enter the guest's names etc. Once filled in, just click on RESERVE. Done! You'll even have the option to add payment manually; and your emails will be automatically generated for you.
2.SYNC BOOKINGS
Why SYNC with booking agencies? Because research says that 76% of online bookings happen through an OTA (Online Travel Agency). However, bear in mind that over 50% of the internet users will visit the actual live hotel website after discovering them through OTA; this is where opportunity comes in! So your website plays a very important role for bookings.
To sync your website calendar with any booking agencies such as Booking. com, Agoda etc, you need to add ical links to each agency, and also from each agency back to your website. It's a 2-way process; rather like shaking hands with someone. You need to export a Calendar URL to the external channel or channels, to notify them about the booking made through your site; and in reverse, you will import the link from them to your site, to notify your site about the bookings made through the channels you link to.
Syncing your bookings means that any booking on ANY of the synced sites, will automatically set the same booking up on any other sites or channels that you've synced. So they all sync with each other, and no overbookings – no duplicated or missed bookings to worry about.
To perform the synchronisation, the online channels that you use must support the icalendar file format known as iCal. Be aware however that syncing doesn't necessarily happen immediately; some booking agencies sync within a few minutes, others only sync once every 12 hours for instance- so do check to see if you can set your own syncing interval at the agencies.
To set up synchronization of your bookings, go to the Bookings tab → Sync Calendars. You'll see a list of all your real accommodations with unique URLs. (The URL is the link under EXPORT.) Note that each separate accommodation (not accommodation type, but each accommodation you set up) will need its own individual link to be synced both ways.
Steps for syncing one accommodation
- Copy the complete url for one accommodation (in the column headed 'EXPORT')
- Go to the external online channel (often simply referred to as an OTA) such as Booking.com and paste your url in the appropriate place there.
- While in the OTA, find the OTA's ical file url and copy it; then back in your own website admin, click on the EDIT under the accommodation to sync, then click ADD NEW CALENDAR, and paste the url in there.
4. Repeat this for every accommodation you want to sync with every OTA.
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