We operate 3 self catering apartments which are online with LateRooms and Booking.com but the commission is high at 18% including vat
We’re happy to pay this commission when guests find us through THEIR website but when they find us through OUR website it would be really good to be able to take the booking direct and cut out the commission
The idea therefore is to allow visitors arriving on our website to make the booking direct rather than just send us an enquiry
Ideally, we’re looking for 4 requirements (or as close as possible)
1 The system should ideally have an easy to use calendar which is easily embedded into our own website
2 When a visitor makes a reservation, the system should close availability for the booking and then email required information about the guest, dates, etc to us
3 We would be looking for the system to be compliant in that it can take credit card details but rather than processing them, the would be passed to us to do a ‘customer not present’ transaction on our terminal
4 An open source or free system would be ideal but we’d look at other systems provided they were not too expensive
All thoughts and advice greatly appreciated, Stephen
Looking for online booking / reservation system for 3 apt's
Booking system
Hello StephenC, Welcome
Have a look at our website, go to the Reservation page on one of the apartments and you'll see our booking form.
This is designed and managed by us and is embedded into the webpage with a simple placeholder. These forms are provided by Wufoo (wufoo dot com), they also have payment forms and gateways for most payment options without the need for a merchant account, although, it sounds as if you have one - they handle that too - we use the PayPal one (see Make A Payment webpage).
We use HL for advertising and embed their availability calendar into the web page - there are free ones on most of the free listing sites, some good some bad.
As for emailing quotes and other confirmations I developed a simple system using Access Database.
Steve
Have a look at our website, go to the Reservation page on one of the apartments and you'll see our booking form.
This is designed and managed by us and is embedded into the webpage with a simple placeholder. These forms are provided by Wufoo (wufoo dot com), they also have payment forms and gateways for most payment options without the need for a merchant account, although, it sounds as if you have one - they handle that too - we use the PayPal one (see Make A Payment webpage).
We use HL for advertising and embed their availability calendar into the web page - there are free ones on most of the free listing sites, some good some bad.
As for emailing quotes and other confirmations I developed a simple system using Access Database.
Steve
"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note"
"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise"
"As for my amnesia, I've had it as long as I can remember"
Real name: Steve
Gender: Male
"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise"
"As for my amnesia, I've had it as long as I can remember"
Real name: Steve
Gender: Male
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cambalala
- Posts: 258
- Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:31 pm
- Location: Hazyview - Mpumalanga - South Africa
- Contact:
I recently signed up to with pims
It doesn't look like much at first. - sorry e-richard
But in the case of pims... looks are VERY deceiving and once you get into it a bit you'll see just how powerful it is. (You have to test drive it to see what you can do.)
I rent out 2 units (hopefully a 3rd soon.) - I've been looking for a new system for a little while now and in the last 2 weeks alone I've tried out 5 different systems all of which seemed at first would address my needs. None did as effectively as pims. - Even pims lacks a few things I need but they are either in the pipeline or currently in development.
The system as it is now is so comprehensive that I don't mind waiting a bit for the next release. Its very versatile so I can work around almost every obstacle I hit.
The 2 most powerful features of pims is the email templates and the tasks functionality.
I wont go into too much detail on these as you really have to test it yourself, but you can set up tasks to remind you to do things and to make sure that you do everything that you need to for every single booking. The email template functions is absolutely fantastic and extremely flexible. You can set up email templates for just about anything. You can also insert values like name, dates, amounts etc from each booking automatically into your templates. (Never copy/past a date or amount wrong again!)
To your points:
check it here: www.holidayrentalmanagement.com
It doesn't look like much at first. - sorry e-richard
But in the case of pims... looks are VERY deceiving and once you get into it a bit you'll see just how powerful it is. (You have to test drive it to see what you can do.)I rent out 2 units (hopefully a 3rd soon.) - I've been looking for a new system for a little while now and in the last 2 weeks alone I've tried out 5 different systems all of which seemed at first would address my needs. None did as effectively as pims. - Even pims lacks a few things I need but they are either in the pipeline or currently in development.
The system as it is now is so comprehensive that I don't mind waiting a bit for the next release. Its very versatile so I can work around almost every obstacle I hit.
The 2 most powerful features of pims is the email templates and the tasks functionality.
I wont go into too much detail on these as you really have to test it yourself, but you can set up tasks to remind you to do things and to make sure that you do everything that you need to for every single booking. The email template functions is absolutely fantastic and extremely flexible. You can set up email templates for just about anything. You can also insert values like name, dates, amounts etc from each booking automatically into your templates. (Never copy/past a date or amount wrong again!)
To your points:
- Check - The calendar is not as flexible as I'd like but certainly better than most and very easy to implement.1 The system should ideally have an easy to use calendar which is easily embedded into our own website
- Check.2 When a visitor makes a reservation, the system should close availability for the booking and then email required information about the guest, dates, etc to us
- Check. I stand to be corrected. But I think this would be easily done buy adding a c.card field to the customer data and storing it there? e-richard?3 We would be looking for the system to be compliant in that it can take credit card details but rather than processing them, the would be passed to us to do a ‘customer not present’ transaction on our terminal
Uncheck on opensource... not cheap by my standards either but I'm just used to paying much less.... however.... that being said, The templates save me around 20 mins in total per booking. - The tasks help me to be less scatterbrained. The support is second to none. The help documentation within the system is so easy to find/read/understand and always there. But above all... e-richard is willing to listen to and even implement your ideas for the system if it will benefit others or just makes good sense to do4 An open source or free system would be ideal but we’d look at other systems provided they were not too expensive
check it here: www.holidayrentalmanagement.com
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kendalcottages
- Posts: 2474
- Joined: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:08 am
- Location: Kendal, between the Lake District and the Dales
- Contact:
Another recommendation for PIMS (although I don't use it for online booking).
Kendal Holiday Cottages Ltd., Kendal, Cumbria - between the Lake District & the Yorkshire Dales.
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christinedavid
- Posts: 277
- Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2008 10:18 am
- Location: Turkey
- Contact:
I use Rentalsystems, which works very well. It fulfills all your requirements except that it processes the credit card. Take a look:
http://www.rentalsystems.com/newowner/j ... m=textlink
http://www.rentalsystems.com/newowner/j ... m=textlink
Best wishes,
Christine
www.sharingadream.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Villa-Sop ... 1197643136
Christine
www.sharingadream.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Villa-Sop ... 1197643136
Thanks to all who posted and have given advice. Apologies that it's taken a while to reply
There's some good recommendations here with PIMS as being the main contender. My main fear here is that this is hosted on servers PC (as opposed to my own) and that if eg, they stopped trading for whatever reason I'd have problems
The beauty though is that there is no commission, only annual fee which I'm guessing I'll have to make a payment one way or other
Rental Systems charge for setup and then 10% which pretty much rules them out
Wufoo seems to be more of a form builder which would not update the calendar and email the credit details to me. Nice one Steve for setting up the database, but I don't have that sort of expertise I'm afraid
By the way, I do have a standard merchant a/c with a card terminal
That's definitely given me something to work on. Thanks again to all who replied
I can see this is going to take some further research
There's some good recommendations here with PIMS as being the main contender. My main fear here is that this is hosted on servers PC (as opposed to my own) and that if eg, they stopped trading for whatever reason I'd have problems
The beauty though is that there is no commission, only annual fee which I'm guessing I'll have to make a payment one way or other
Rental Systems charge for setup and then 10% which pretty much rules them out
Wufoo seems to be more of a form builder which would not update the calendar and email the credit details to me. Nice one Steve for setting up the database, but I don't have that sort of expertise I'm afraid
By the way, I do have a standard merchant a/c with a card terminal
That's definitely given me something to work on. Thanks again to all who replied
I can see this is going to take some further research-
cambalala
- Posts: 258
- Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:31 pm
- Location: Hazyview - Mpumalanga - South Africa
- Contact:
Yep, I had exactly the same concerns and voiced them to e-richard (of pims) - He told me that in the gold version I can extract the data with excel reports as i please. So I've decided that I'll take monthly backups that way. - anything more recent I can get from emails etc. My data is pretty important to me and it would be cool if pims could implement some more automated local pc backup system. - But i suppose this would be an issue with any online service. The one bit of comfort I take is that e-richard is one of us so he has a vested interest in the product too as I assume its how he manages his own bookings.stephenc wrote:My main fear here is that this is hosted on servers PC (as opposed to my own) and that if eg, they stopped trading for whatever reason I'd have problems
- Agreed, I'd never feel comfortable paying comm. with the amount of bookings I do. Not sure of all the payment options available, I just paid via paypal on signup.stephenc wrote: The beauty though is that there is no commission, only annual fee which I'm guessing I'll have to make a payment one way or other
I think its only 10% for bookings they send your way with their own listing sites then its something like 2.5% for others.... I cant remember exactly as I was thinking of using them a while back and it all sounded rather complicated, how they tell your own bookings from theirs using cookies etc etc etc.stephenc wrote: Rental Systems charge for setup and then 10% which pretty much rules them out
If you have a merchant account you can then use a payment gateway to take your payments etc online at a fixed small fee per transaction. I'm thinking of doing the same thing, just weighing up the costs of a merchant account and "virtual merchant account".stephenc wrote: By the way, I do have a standard merchant a/c with a card terminal
Good luck and have fun. I tried out a few systems over the last few weeks and found pims to be the best for my needs.
rgds,
Ray.
Check out www.myvrzone.com too.
It's not as polished, or as user-friendly as PIMS, but it does have a few features that PIMS doesn't - e.g. the ability to apply automatic discounts and/or surcharges, and the ability to see whether or not customers have clicked on links in the emails you send them.
It also integrates well if you have your own Merchant Account - for example, you can specify that you just Authorise the CC for a Security Deposit, rather than actually taking it and refunding it. The actual CC transaction is done by you, unless you use one of their partners (currently only US gateways). PayPal Integration is also straightforward.
It does require a certain amount of HTML if you want to get the most out of it (e.g. customising the emails that it sends out), so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anyone that doesn't have a bit of web programming knowledge (although if you want emails customised, they will do this for you for an additional fee).
If you *do* have some web skills, then I would say that it's actually more powerful than PIMs, but for around half the cost. (The most expensive "Platinum" option is US$120 per year).
Whereas PIMs have a 60-day "money back" guarantee, MyVRZone give you a 60-day free trial - so you actually get your first 14 months for US$120.
Neil.
It's not as polished, or as user-friendly as PIMS, but it does have a few features that PIMS doesn't - e.g. the ability to apply automatic discounts and/or surcharges, and the ability to see whether or not customers have clicked on links in the emails you send them.
It also integrates well if you have your own Merchant Account - for example, you can specify that you just Authorise the CC for a Security Deposit, rather than actually taking it and refunding it. The actual CC transaction is done by you, unless you use one of their partners (currently only US gateways). PayPal Integration is also straightforward.
It does require a certain amount of HTML if you want to get the most out of it (e.g. customising the emails that it sends out), so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anyone that doesn't have a bit of web programming knowledge (although if you want emails customised, they will do this for you for an additional fee).
If you *do* have some web skills, then I would say that it's actually more powerful than PIMs, but for around half the cost. (The most expensive "Platinum" option is US$120 per year).
Whereas PIMs have a 60-day "money back" guarantee, MyVRZone give you a 60-day free trial - so you actually get your first 14 months for US$120.
Neil.
Hi
If you're still looking, you may also want to consider Super Control. https://secure.supercontrol.co.uk/
It works on fees rather than commission and is very comprehensive, able to provide a wide range of reports, analytics, booking options etc. You can export all data to Excel and financial data to Sage.
They provide very good training to get you going and continue to hold your hand thereafter, although 2-years on I'm still discovering new tricks
They also have my favourite kind of support service. The phone is always answered by someone who seem genuinely pleased to hear from you within three rings - and who is always knowledgeable enough to sort you out. Only once did they say they would call back within the hour with a solution - and did so within 20 minutes.
If you're still looking, you may also want to consider Super Control. https://secure.supercontrol.co.uk/
It works on fees rather than commission and is very comprehensive, able to provide a wide range of reports, analytics, booking options etc. You can export all data to Excel and financial data to Sage.
They provide very good training to get you going and continue to hold your hand thereafter, although 2-years on I'm still discovering new tricks
They also have my favourite kind of support service. The phone is always answered by someone who seem genuinely pleased to hear from you within three rings - and who is always knowledgeable enough to sort you out. Only once did they say they would call back within the hour with a solution - and did so within 20 minutes.
Rick Bond
If you build it (properly) - people will come.
<a href="http://www.myfavouriteholidaycottages.co.uk">My Favourite Holiday Cottages</a>
<a href="http://www.myholidaymarketing.co.uk">My Holiday Marketing</a>
If you build it (properly) - people will come.
<a href="http://www.myfavouriteholidaycottages.co.uk">My Favourite Holiday Cottages</a>
<a href="http://www.myholidaymarketing.co.uk">My Holiday Marketing</a>
Thanks for these 2 extra sites which coincidentally I'm able to add a further one Bookalet www.bookalet.co.uk which emailed me today.
The problem is I don't seem to be able to find the time to check these out properly but I'm hoping to trawl through them in the next week.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to request Paolo to run some sort of poll seperate from this post to see just how many accommodation providers prefer each individual application and to see just how popular they are in relation to eachother?
The problem is I don't seem to be able to find the time to check these out properly but I'm hoping to trawl through them in the next week.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to request Paolo to run some sort of poll seperate from this post to see just how many accommodation providers prefer each individual application and to see just how popular they are in relation to eachother?
Am I right in thinking they also charge a commission rate of $5 / night also?nstead wrote:Check out www.myvrzone.com too.
(The most expensive "Platinum" option is US$120 per year).
Whereas PIMs have a 60-day "money back" guarantee, MyVRZone give you a 60-day free trial - so you actually get your first 14 months for US$120.
Neil.
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bentisdall
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:32 am
- Location: La Bourboule, Auvergne & London
- Contact:
Open source booking system
Well I've had the website for my new agency West Country Lets built in Joomla (open source & PHP) using Jomres (which is an extension for bookings, hotels etc). I can highly recommend Hazel Wilson who's done the development and her website is www.highlandvision.com - you can see some of the sites she's built there. It of course means you can host the site wherever you wish.
Re: Open source booking system
Just had a quick look at this thanks, it's great that it's open source and free but it looks like there is quite a bit of developement work required to get it working. I wonder if I'd be reinventing the wheel here?bentisdall wrote:Well I've had the website for my new agency West Country Lets built in Joomla (open source & PHP) using Jomres (which is an extension for bookings, hotels etc). I can highly recommend Hazel Wilson who's done the development and her website is www.highlandvision.com - you can see some of the sites she's built there. It of course means you can host the site wherever you wish.
It's looking like it might be better to pay for a system rather than spend a lot of time on it, though I'll maybe give Hazel a shout and see what might be involved.
Thanks for this bentisdall
Only if you get a booking via one of the free-to-list Partner Listing Sites that MyVRZone powers.stephenc wrote:Am I right in thinking they also charge a commission rate of $5 / night also?nstead wrote:Check out www.myvrzone.com too.
(The most expensive "Platinum" option is US$120 per year).
Whereas PIMs have a 60-day "money back" guarantee, MyVRZone give you a 60-day free trial - so you actually get your first 14 months for US$120.
Neil.
There are no per-reservation fees in the system. If you get all your own reservations via other means then you just pay the annual fee.
Cheers,
Neil (of MyVRZone.com)
www.MyVRZone.com - Vacation Rental Management Software
www.emeraldislandorlando.com - Emerald Island Resort VR
www.windsorpalmsorlando.com - Windsor Palms Resort VR
www.emeraldislandorlando.com - Emerald Island Resort VR
www.windsorpalmsorlando.com - Windsor Palms Resort VR
Still trying to find time to dedicate to this project but it's in short supply at the moment, however the suggestion from bentisdall interested me and I'm presently installing Joomla onto a test domain site I keep available which is handy for purposes like this.
I understand that there is a plug in module from Jomras at http://www.jomres.net/ which in their words is a 'is a free hotel/b&b/villa booking system that integrates seamlessly with the Joomla'
Just not enough hours in the day...
I understand that there is a plug in module from Jomras at http://www.jomres.net/ which in their words is a 'is a free hotel/b&b/villa booking system that integrates seamlessly with the Joomla'
Just not enough hours in the day...