Someone mistook our direct mail for a booking enquiry

We have just started experimenting with direct mail and sent out a promotional postcard to a few Bed and Breakfasts in the UK. On one side it has a mocked-up email booking enquiry, making the point that having live online bookings is easier than dealing with email enquiries:

Then the reverse describes KeepMeBooked's online booking engine:

I was a little worried that some might find the tongue-in-cheek tone of the mock email a little patronizing, especially people who do already have online booking (and two recipients did take the trouble to email and say exactly that, saying they found the postcard "hostile" and "aggressive". Fair enough. That's why we do tests. I've obviously emailed them back and politely thanked them for getting in touch, and reassured them that we won't trouble them with future mailings.)

But regardless of whether people like the tone, understand the message, respond well or not, it never occurred to me that someone might actually think that our promotional postcard was a genuine booking enquiry. Yet someone did. And wrote back to say that, yes, they did have a room available:

I'm putting this up here not to mock this B&B owner, or be disrespectful. But just as a reminder that in our world of iPads and Google Apps and Skype and Facebook and Foursquare there live people who are almost untouched by technology, and for whom the reverse side of our postcard (talking about online booking) must have been such gobbledegook that they just had to ignore it and make what they could of the other side. What else could that be other than a request to stay on 16th or 19th July? Without a phone number to call, what else to do other than to write back to the peculiar Mr Edwards of Tortoise Software Ltd and offer him a room?

Reminds me of this ReadWriteWeb post entitled 'Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login' which appeared for a while at #1 in Google for people searching for "Facebook login". So thousands of people thought it was the Facebook login page and left baffled comments asking why the page had changed and could they have the old Facebook login page back please.

Many tech commenters derided the hapless Facebook users, but those users are not idiots, their lives just don't involve the internet outside of their email and Facebook. Just like my world doesn't involve cars outside of using one to travel from A to B. Sure, for a mechanic it is utterly obvious that if (and I'm going to have to make something up here) the power drops at high revs in fourth gear, then obviously the carburettor is aspirating and the manifold pressure needs adjusting, but to me those things are alien. I don't know what "aspirating" means nor how you would begin to adjust "manifold pressure". Car won't accelerate, can't log in to Facebook. Same thing.

A B&B owner with absolutely no concept of how computers work or what they do isn't going to start using KeepMeBooked any time soon. But there is still a huge group of people who use computers but who are forever operating at the very limit of their comfort zone. Don't forget them.


*************
Thinking reservation software is too complicated? Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based reservation software for B&Bs and guesthouses.

New features: sales tax support, menus reorganised

We've just released a sales tax feature to allow you to show sales tax separately. European consumers are accustomed to seeing prices with sales tax included; North Americans would expect to see prices with tax shown separately.

You'll see a new field under Settings > Your Details of 'Sales Tax'. If you don't need to show sales tax as a separate line in your invoices, just leave this field blank. If you enter a percentage in this field, then the booking details screen, and your PDF invoices will acquire a new line like this:

We've also reorganised the Reports and Settings menus, so 'Export Data' is now under Reports (it was under Settings because we originally released that feature before the Reports menu existed):

And we've reordered and renamed many of the Settings options to make them tidier and quicker to glance through (so 'Seasons' instead of 'Setup Seasons'; 'Emails' instead of 'Automate emails'):

iPhone/iPad app, sneak preview

Here's a sneak preview of our iPhone / iPad app, which we plan to have completed by end of August. It will allow you to view your calendar, check availability and add or edit bookings from your iPhone. And will look something like this:

Select one or all rooms to view on calendar:

See availability for those rooms:

View a booking:

Edit / add a booking:

Search for a guest:

That's pretty much it. You won't be able to do any configuration (adding rooms, setting up seasons, etc.), just the basic tasks you are likely to want to do on the move.. (Although on the iPad version we might later add some more features to allow you to use an iPad  as your primary device to access KeepMeBooked).

At the same time, we'll also being doing a web version of KeepMeBooked optimised for small screens so we don't leave behind those users who prefer using a Blackberry (or other smartphone) rather than an iPhone.

**********
Looking for reservation software on your iPhone - coming soon to KeepMeBooked.

New lower pricing: now just $40/month for up to 10 rooms

We've changed our pricing structure so that KeepMeBooked is a lot more affordable for most users. With our old flat-rate-per-room pricing, it was costing $120 per month for a 10-room B&B to use KeepMeBooked. Under our new pricing, a 10-room B&B will pay just $40 per month.

We want everyone to have good-looking, easy-to-use reservation software. We want everyone to be able to take proper, live, paid-for online bookings on their website, without paying a commission on every booking. Reducing our prices makes KeepMeBooked accessible to far more users.

And one large cost of running web-based software is providing tech support. But we've found that you guys don't need a whole lot of support. That's kind of the point: KeepMeBooked is supposed to be easy to use. By investing time and effort in making KeepMeBooked simple to use, we can save on support costs and pass those savings on to you the user. (Just to be clear: we aren't skimping on support. If you need support, you'll still get it, of course. It's just that we've found we don't need to devote as many man-hours to support as we thought we might)

Here's the new pricing:

(More than 20 rooms? Drop us a line.)

We've also changed the plan names. Regular is now called Lite and Plus is now called Standard. Lite doesn't include the online booking engine for your website, Standard does.

(Users with just 1 or 2 rooms now pay more than they did before: but if you signed up for a paid plan before this change, you get to keep your old price, don't worry! And if you have pre-paid for several months at the old higher prices, we'll also sort you out so you get these new rates right away, fear not.)


Sign up for your free one-month trial now and experience KeepMeBooked for yourself

Online booking calendar improved

We've made some small changes to the layout of the online booking calendar, removing some clutter and making it simpler still. Here is the old one:

We've removed the 'Today' button (not very useful, guest probably doesn't want to jump to today); repositioned the next month/previous month arrows to make it clearer that's what they are; and changed "Arriving on:" to the explicit instruction "Select your arrival date:"

So it now looks like this:

******
Want to fill your B&B with commission-free online bookings?
Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based reservation software with live online booking engine

New feature: better handling of family / dorm room pricing

We've introduced another tweak to pricing to allow you to reflect rooms where you set a minimum price for the room, plus extras for extra people. This is common for dorm or family rooms, where the number of people in the room varies, but it is not quite a simple as just having a 'per person' price.

If a room sleeps more than two people, you'll see a new "Extra person charge" checkbox appear:

So now you can have a 4-person room which might cost £100 for the room, plus another £15 for each person above two. Two people would just pay £100; three £115 and four £130.

(Sure, we could use the more standard procedure of having you enter a total price for one person, a total price for two people, a total price for three people, a total price for four people, etc., but we figured we'd have a crack at trying to keep it a wee bit simpler. And that price-per-occupancy method gets tiresome if you have a dorm which might sleep up to 12 people.)

New feature: check-in and check-out guests

As per sneak preview a few days ago, we have now completed the check-in and check-out function. Here's how it works:

Any bookings due to arrive today now appear with a red border on the calendar:

Open any of these bookings and you'll see a new 'Check in' button:

Once you check them in and save the booking, the red border disappears:

And there's a similar process for bookings that need checking out. Anyone due to leave today shows in a yellow border until you check them out:

Check-in and check-out times are recorded as you perform check in (or out). You can see the times in the booking details screen, and they also now appear in the exportable 'Guests and Bookings' report (Settings -> Export Data).

We have taken a slightly offbeat approach here. Rather than simply display the checked-in status, we've displayed those bookings that need your attention. Either because they are arriving today but you haven't yet checked them in, or because they are leaving today and you haven't yet checked them out. We hope this is more useful than simply showing a booking as checked in or checked out. Do let us know what you think of this feature and whether the approach we have taken works for your business.

Update: Forgot to mention that you need to configure your timezone for this feature to work correctly. You can do this in Settings -> Your details.

****** 
Looking for reservation software that just keeps getting better? Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based software for B&Bs and guesthouses