Booking management systems

[Jay GHC]

Fairly new to all this so please bear with me here. I've taken over a complex with 6 cottages that has suffered from a low occupancy rate for quite a while. We've rennovated our cottages, got a new website up and got the surroundings in a good state. So now we are trying to get our name out everywhere to get good exposure.

I've got a booking company that our website links to so we can take bookings direct, also with Sykes and BC but every time i get a booking I have to update all three calanders manually as our booking provider doesn't sync calanders with these, which is a bit of a headache.

I also want to go on OD, TA, Expedia and as many others as I can. Dont mind paying commision at the moment, just trying to get our occupancy up in the out of season and i'm hoping to attract repeat business in the long term.

Can anyone suggest a booking company or method used that makes syncing calenders a lot less hassle. I'm scared stiff I'm going to let one booking slip through the net and end up with a double booking.

Thanks in advance
Jay

[Joanna]

Several of us use PIMS which is run by a fellow Hatter:
https://www.holidayrentalmanagement.com

The calendars can be imported into most listing sites although I'm not sure about Sykes.

PIMS alerts you if you try to take a booking for dates already booked.

I may have a referral code so let me know if you decide to go down that route.

[Joanna]

Just checked - I do have a referral code that will give you an extra 3 months on the usual subscription

[Bordering]

Take a look at Supercontrol. It's a belt-and-braces approach which is set up for transitioning into - when you've handled a few hundred bookings and start realising that the big sites are taking margin which could otherwise be more yours. Branding is so important. Make sure the name is distinctive and unambiguous. In the sites which won't permit you to use your name in property titles (which is most of them these days), include it near the start of the descriptions. I'm not affiliated btw, but have looked at many possibilities, and this is a good one. Not cheap, but buy cheap is usually buy twice.

[ianh100]

We use PIMS and like it. We looked at Supercontrol as a letting company we were considering insisted on it. It looks to have good features but felt it was designed for a holiday letting agency rather than an owner of a small complex. I think you can get a free trial to see what you think.

[Bordering]

I did say belt-and-braces. Yes the agency version does everything you could possibly dream up as something you might want it to do. I use airbnb, and it has all that functionality, and some more, albeit less pretty, minus owners’ and guests’ fees, but plus the annual price. Their year 1 price is higher than after, which is presumably to cover the fairly extensive support required by some users at the outset.

[sylvainbg]

I am using a channel manager hostaway

[Nigel Goodwin]

I think you should be looking for a combined booking system/channel manager. When comparing systems, look at how well they support both needs.

Channel management has become so complicated nowadays, and there are so many (changing) channels to consider.

The system should be two-way - if, say, you get an airbnb booking, it should immediately be reflected in your system, and if you get a booking from anywhere, all channels should be immediately updated.

Ideally manage all your information in the system, including photos, pricing, descriptions, availability, and let it propogate to all channels.

As others have mentioned elsewhere, propogating pricing is difficult, if not impossible, because different channels have different pricing concepts. For example, TripAdvisor does not seem to know what a short break is.

Probably somewhere on LMH there is a list of leading booking/channel managers.

[cpelwood]

I use Freetobook for 7 cottages - find them excellent. I use ical feed for the availability calendar and take credit card bookings using their Fabpay sytem (which also keeps accounting simple). The up take on their review system is huge (I think the system automatically emails guests after the holiday, but it must be in a very "polite" way as people do respond. It's a fairly simple system - free to use simply as a "booking diary" but then they charge for some of the features. Incidentally you can run it as a channel manager with the likes of Booking .com (I don't)

[Giuliano]

I use Avaibook, quite efficient also for synching and for virtual POS payments.