Accommodation Booking Systems

A hotel/motel booking engine is an accommodation booking system, an essential online tool that allows hotels and motels to manage direct reservations. It acts as an automated system, displaying real-time room rates and availability to potential guests. Integrated with your website or social media, it allows for secure online payments and bookings, bypassing the need for commission-based OTAs. A booking engine is crucial for increasing direct bookings and improving overall revenue management.

A booking engine is vital for hotels as it increases direct bookings and simplifies reservation management. Instead of relying on emails or phone calls, guests can book directly via your website or social channels. Additionally, booking engines integrate seamlessly with email marketing, allowing you to include personalised links for easier reservations. By automating the booking process, hotels can enhance guest satisfaction and increase revenue without relying on third-party platforms.

Guests access the booking engine via a “Book Now” button on your website or social media. After selecting dates and number of guests, the system displays available rooms and rates. Guests can view room details, amenities, and prices, and then proceed to make secure online payments. The booking engine also allows users to save their preferences for future bookings and sends an automated confirmation email once the reservation is complete.

For small to medium-sized properties, including boutique hotels and bed-and-breakfasts, GuestPoint offers an ideal solution. Its user-friendly interface is designed for owners and managers, providing features such as secure payment processing and integration with front-office management and channel manager systems. This all-in-one solution simplifies direct bookings, helping you efficiently manage your property within the PMS (property management system) from a single platform.

A channel manager and booking engine serve different roles in managing hotel reservations. The channel manager distributes room inventory across various online platforms like OTAs, while the booking engine facilitates direct bookings via your website. Both are essential to a property’s distribution strategy, with the booking engine often driving more revenue by eliminating OTA commissions. The channel manager ensures your availability is updated across all platforms, while the booking engine handles direct reservations.

Yes, featuring links to your direct acommodation booking systems on metasearch platforms like Google Hotels or TripAdvisor can significantly increase your direct bookings. Metasearch engines are rapidly growing in popularity and allow hotels to bypass OTAs by handling bookings directly. Integrating your booking engine with Google Hotel Ads or similar services can lead to more direct traffic and increase revenue for smaller properties.  This is a free feature when you use the GuestPoint All-in-One solution.

Integrating a booking engine into your website is straightforward with platforms like GuestPoint.  GuestPoint offers Website building and integration as a part of its suite of products all offered in the built-in solutions.  For other platforms like WordPress or Squarespace, you can manually add a “Book Now” button and link it to your booking engine by contacting your website provider. This ensures a seamless booking process for guests visiting your website.

Yes, support is available 24/7 for booking engine setup and ongoing maintenance. GuestPoint offers a range of support options, including phone, and email, as well as access to a comprehensive Learning Centre that provides tutorials on various features like managing direct bookings and configuring payment options.  Or check out the GuestPoint YouTube Channel.

A direct booking web page refers to the webpage on your website where guests can make direct bookings using your booking engine. This page can be customised to include detailed descriptions, photos, and policies, making it an important tool for capturing direct reservations. A direct booking web page can also be linked to Google Business profiles, ensuring it appears on Google Maps and search results.