Dedicated Holiday Letting Websites With Live Availability Calendars & Online Booking System
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The Ultimate Holiday Property Rental System Keeps Getting Better
As far as we know this is the only place you can get a website for your holiday letting that has a real-time availability calendar, instant booking and online payments all integrated - no plug ins or 3rd party extras needed. One monthly payment covers everything. After around 10,000 man-hours of development we launched in November 2011, but we didn't stop there. That was just for what we considered the basics - a content management system where you can change ANY of the content, availability calendar and booking system - now we are moving ahead with new features. Some are just minor tweaks and additions to make life easier or add more flexibility, some are going to be quite major, particularly in the key areas for SEO (getting more visitors to your website), converting visitors into paying guests and reporting & management systems.
As we add these features, everybody gets the updates automatically and for free - that is the point of Software As A Service (SaaS) - there is only one codebase - your website keeps getting updated automatically, no need to pay for another website in 3 or 5 years time.
As we add these features, everybody gets the updates automatically and for free - that is the point of Software As A Service (SaaS) - there is only one codebase - your website keeps getting updated automatically, no need to pay for another website in 3 or 5 years time.
February 2012
Security Deposit Options
We have increased the number of options for collecting security deposits - the main one being to collect it at the time of being paid for the balance/total.
Booking Form Occupancy
Fixed a small bug in the booking form where it was possible to exceed the maximum occupancy and enter all the guests names - can't now!
Map without Sidebar
Added the option to turn the Sidebar off when using a Map - useful when just needing to show one location.
New Booking Discounts
We added the Late Booking discount option bringing the total of options to 5.
Each option has a date range, the percentage (or fixed value), the type of discount and it's associated value. It is possible to have more than one of the same discount i.e. Late Booking of 20% if within 30 days (as above) and another Late Booking of 30% if within 10 days. It would be unusual to enable them all at the same time, the different discounts are cumulative - you could have a couple booking Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday within 2 weeks and getting Late Booking + Midweek Special + Over 3 Nights + Low Occupancy, it can be done but you probably wouldn't want to!
Each option has a date range, the percentage (or fixed value), the type of discount and it's associated value. It is possible to have more than one of the same discount i.e. Late Booking of 20% if within 30 days (as above) and another Late Booking of 30% if within 10 days. It would be unusual to enable them all at the same time, the different discounts are cumulative - you could have a couple booking Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday within 2 weeks and getting Late Booking + Midweek Special + Over 3 Nights + Low Occupancy, it can be done but you probably wouldn't want to!
January 2012
Cascading Thumbnail View
When displaying many properties, instead of having categories as a navigation menu, they can now all be on one page with the categories used as page dividers.
Custom Fonts
We've tidied up the fonts by moving them all to a Font Library and added a custom font option. The custom fonts we are using are from the Google Font API - just select the font name of the one you like then paste it into the Custom Font field and turn it on. Each font in the library has a Custom Font (CF) checkbox to enable the custom font - if for some reason it is unavailable it will degrade to the chosen "browser default" font.
December 2011
Under Occupancy Discount Option
We built a website for a client who previously had a discount if their gite wasn't fully occupied so we added a new option type to the discounts - if the number of guests arriving is less or equal to the value set then the discount is applied.
Thumbnails
When a property photo is uploaded, up to eight display images are made and assigned to a part of the CMS - catalogue thumbnail, checkout thumbnail,etc. Now the catalogue & checkout thumbnails are selectable. Fixed a minor bug in the image processor which improves the final image quality.
Minimum Stay Option
Minimum number of nights has been added to the pricing options to increase the flexibility of the booking calendar. Now you can force a minimum number of nights or use the fixed + per night pricing method to offer short stays.
November 2011
Availability Search
Added the availability search feature to the Header. Above shows both the frontend and the admin customisation options.
The availability search works with all websites, even those with only one property. It is mainly for multiple property websites so website visitors can filter the properties to show only those with the selected dates. The ability to browse all the properties can be turned off. When using the availability search, each properties calendar range is reduced to X weeks either side of the selected arrival date.
The availability search works with all websites, even those with only one property. It is mainly for multiple property websites so website visitors can filter the properties to show only those with the selected dates. The ability to browse all the properties can be turned off. When using the availability search, each properties calendar range is reduced to X weeks either side of the selected arrival date.
Catalogue Can be Added to The Home Page
A change to the template system means a Catalogue Box can be added to the website Home Page (or any other page). Mainly for multi-property websites, this can show Featured Properties, Most Popular as a thumbnail layout on the home page.
New Thumbnail Mode
An alternative thumbnail view has been added to the Catalogue - Rollover Mode. The thumbnail uses a full size image and when a visitor moves their mouse over the text & descriptions are shown.
New Pricing Method
As we were beta testing a B&B version of the booking system, we needed to make a change to the pricing - the existing method of a fixed amount + per night amount still stands. Now there are two nightly rates which you can select from the Monday-Sunday panel, just tick the nights that are at the higher rate. More flexibility in pricing. We dropped the Low-Mid-High season colour selector - turned out to be unnecessary.
Checkout Age Selector
We had a suggestion from one client using one of our single property websites that the optional age field on the Checkout booking form could be a drop down selector instead of a type in field. Originally it was intended for just getting the age of any children, but the client would like to know the adults as well so they could prepare their cottage accordingly. This is still an option you can enable/disable.