The Booking Factory December Update 2017

It’s just been 4 weeks since our winter update and time for another post to tell you about our latest updates…

App Localisation is ready

We have been busy to make changes to allow full localisation and I can now confirm it’s ready for translation. We have a few partners already started the German and Greek languages.

If you want the system in your local language just let me know and you can translate yourself. (Theres a lot of translating to do!)

Coming Languages: German, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai

Multi Property Accounts

Now it’s possible to run multiple properties on one account. This is great for some businesses that have multiple small b&b’s, Apartments or Villas with different physical addresses. The confirmation emails will send the correct address details for whichever property is booked. Also our email drop in widgets will use the correct details.

(We already had ability to connect multiple channel managers)

Multiple Booking Engine Profiles

With multi property we needed to allow multiple booking engine profiles also, but don’t think this feature is only useful to people with multiple properties.

Main Uses of Booking Engine Profiles:

1. Separate properties for multi property accounts
2. Create booking engine for each room type
3. Create booking engine for special offers
4. Create booking engine for Agents & Corporate accounts

You have full control of what is included in the booking engine:

1. Choose Room types, rate plans, special offers to display
2. Options such as Address needed, credit card required etc.
3. Password protect the booking engine
4. Custom URL for the booking engine
5. Custom reference for Agents.

This is quite an advanced feature and great for savvy marketers out there so will be exciting to see how it will be used.

Room Allocation Priority

Now it’s possible for you to specify a preference which rooms you want the bookings allocated on new bookings.

To use this feature the highest number is the highest priority.

Smaller Updates:

Booking Source for offline bookings — An often requested feature was to allow the user to specify the origin of an offline booking. Such as Telephone, Email, Agent etc. Now when you add a new booking you can choose from a selection of sources or add new.

Booking Engine update for multi occupancy rate plans — We made it easier to filter our rate plans by letting users choose adult and children numbers.

Payment Express Reference Text — Now you can create a template of what data you wish to show in the reference text of a payment. Example: (customer_lastname), (invoice_number).

Bed Preference — Now you can set up a bed setup on each room type and the booking engine will ask the guest which setup they would prefer. Example: Double/Twin Rooms.

Occupancy Report Update — We have added to the occupancy report a daily breakdown, useful to know both the summary and daily breakdown.

Reaction filter Addition — We added a new filter to our automation engine “Days to Arrival” this new filter is handy to catch last minute bookings or to filter for bookings made far in advance

In addition there was a lot of minor bugs fixed and minor feature enhancements.

What is happening next?

We have a top secret app in the works that I should get to show you some screenshots in February sometime.

Also…

We have more localisation enhancements and template enhancements that I will keep you updated on. This will allow you to localise your booking engine to be truly multi language.