Most guesthouses and Bed and Breakfasts still use a black book by the telephone to manage their bookings. Here are three reasons to consider switching to using bed and breakfast booking software instead:
1. Take online bookings. This is the big one. Modern web-based bed and breakfast software can easily be linked to your website to let you take online bookings (really easily, you just put a single link or special code on your website and the software will do the rest). The black book by your telephone can't take online bookings. Remember, the majority of internet users will book online if you let them.
2. Reporting. If you use bed and breakfast booking software to manage all your bookings, then you can easily run a report to check your total revenue over the year, your sales tax/GST/VAT for the quarter, and so on. You might even be able to import this data directly into your accounting software so you (or your accountant) don't have to key it in manually.
3. Contacting previous guests. If your guest contact details are scribbled in your black book, it is hard to send them all an email or a special offer in the mail. If you use bed and breakfast booking software, you'll have an easily accessible database of guest contact details that you can use for marketing, to increase your repeat bookings.
******
Still using a black book to manage your guesthouse reservations? Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based software for B&Bs and gueshouses.
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Sneak preview of room types function / selling by-the-bed
KeepMeBooked has always required you to manage pricing for each room individually, which is great if you have fewer than, say, 30 rooms. But a little cumbersome if you have more than that. And it is especially problematic for hostels who sell individual beds. Currently, you could set up 20 beds, but your guest would have to select a specific bed when they make an online booking (Bed1: just near the door. Bed 2: right above Bed 1. Bed 3: fabulous view of Beds 1 & 2. etc.). And if you change your pricing, you have to change it for every individual bed.
We are just testing a new feature which will let you group rooms (or beds) into types, if you want to, so that you can manage your pricing more easily if you have lots of identical rooms.
We toyed with the idea of doing what traditional reservation software does and require you to set up room types, so every room is linked to a room type and pricing is managed at the room type level. But that's annoying for the majority of our users who want to manage each room individually and don't think of their rooms as being mere "Double Rooms" or "Family Rooms", but rather each has a character of its own.
So we will just quietly slip in a new checkbox in the Accommodation screen which says:
And then, as if by magic, you can create a load of identical rooms, all with the same pricing and so on. So if you have a hostel with 25 identically-priced beds, then you can have all the beds showing on your calendar:
But guests booking online just see the choice once, because they just want a bed, they don't mind if it is bed 7 or bed 12:
Geeks reading this will realise that this is really frigging complicated for us to do, because the thing which you edit on the Accommodation screen is sometimes a room and sometimes a room type (with lots of rooms underneath it). But we like that: things which are beautifully simple to the user, but really nasty and complicated for us are generally good things. It often takes a lot of work to make things simple.
We are still testing this, so it probably won't be on the live server for a few days (or more, depending how the testing goes), but it is just so cool I couldn't resist giving you a sneak preview.
******
Looking for beautifully simple booking software? Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based reservation software for your B&B, hostel or guesthouse.
We are just testing a new feature which will let you group rooms (or beds) into types, if you want to, so that you can manage your pricing more easily if you have lots of identical rooms.
We toyed with the idea of doing what traditional reservation software does and require you to set up room types, so every room is linked to a room type and pricing is managed at the room type level. But that's annoying for the majority of our users who want to manage each room individually and don't think of their rooms as being mere "Double Rooms" or "Family Rooms", but rather each has a character of its own.
So we will just quietly slip in a new checkbox in the Accommodation screen which says:
And then, as if by magic, you can create a load of identical rooms, all with the same pricing and so on. So if you have a hostel with 25 identically-priced beds, then you can have all the beds showing on your calendar:
But guests booking online just see the choice once, because they just want a bed, they don't mind if it is bed 7 or bed 12:
Geeks reading this will realise that this is really frigging complicated for us to do, because the thing which you edit on the Accommodation screen is sometimes a room and sometimes a room type (with lots of rooms underneath it). But we like that: things which are beautifully simple to the user, but really nasty and complicated for us are generally good things. It often takes a lot of work to make things simple.
We are still testing this, so it probably won't be on the live server for a few days (or more, depending how the testing goes), but it is just so cool I couldn't resist giving you a sneak preview.
******
Looking for beautifully simple booking software? Try KeepMeBooked: simple web-based reservation software for your B&B, hostel or guesthouse.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
What does "easy-to-use" mean, anyway?
At KeepMeBooked we put a lot of effort into making our reservation software easy to use.
The trouble is, talking about this doesn't really differentiate us from any other reservation software provider, because everyone says their software is easy to use. You don't often see software described as "kind of complicated and hard, but it's worth it once you've read the manual and figured it all out."
Ease-of-use is subjective, and depends on your experience. I used to think my Sony Ericsson P1i was easy to use until I got an iPhone. Someone who flys Boeing 747s for a living, thinks that the 747 user interface is easy to use. For anyone else (including, probably, pilots trained on a different aircraft) it is overwhelmingly complex.
Counting the number of steps required to perform a task is one (imperfect) way of measuring ease-of-use. One reason why the iPhone is so popular is because you can perform tasks with fewer steps than you could on other smartphones: Pinch the screen to zoom in. Shake the whole device to undo. Setup email by just entering your webmail address and password.
At KeepMeBooked, one thing we do to try and keep our web-based reservation software easy to use is to see how we can reduce each task to the minimum necessary steps. Can we find a shorter/quicker way to let you do something? Let's have a look the process for setting up a new room in KeepMeBooked:
Click 'Add New Room' on the main calendar screen:
Then enter room name, capacity, price and save it:
Traditional hotel/guesthouse reservation software typically has a much longer process, involving 20-30 actions broken into four stages:
1. Create a room type
2. Create at least one room of that type
3. Create at least one rate plan
4. Apply that rate plan to the room type
Here are some fictional mockups showing the kind of process traditional hotel/guesthouse reservation software would have you follow to set up a new room:
Click 'add new room type':
Fill out some fields:
Then start creating a room:
Fill out some more fields, including the room type you created earlier:
Save that and then pick a rate plan to apply to this room:
You haven't got any rate plans yet, so create a new one:
Fill out the dates this rate is valid, and the rate for each night of the week:
Save that, and you are done. One new double room @ £65 a night successfully created. In 27 easy steps spread over 7 screens (count them if you like).
Even though it takes longer, the above process is still easy insofar that it is not hard. Not hard like calculus is hard. But it is still taking 27 steps when 3-4 would do. And you have to think a little bit at each step (Do rates apply to rooms? Or room types? What if I have a uniquely special double room? Is that a room or room type?). The longer a process takes, the more room for error, and for you to kind of forget where you are in the process and what, exactly, you need to do next.
If you are still with me, you are probably thinking, "you are cheating here, Bruce. If the room price doesn't need to vary at all, then you can have fewer steps. Your mocking 27-step process includes the option to vary the price by day of week but your 3-4 step process doesn't."
And that's true, but not everyone needs their prices to vary by day of week. If you don't need that flexibility, we try not to distract you with it at KeepMeBooked. That's one way we manage to reduce the number of steps: we make some assumptions about what you are likely to need at first, and let you add complexity later if you need it. So if you want prices to vary by day of week, you've got one extra click to expose the day-of-week pricing, then 6 numbers to enter your prices for the other days. That's still well short of the 27 steps in the example above.
Next up, I'll look at the process for entering a new reservation. Should this be 2 steps or 15?
The trouble is, talking about this doesn't really differentiate us from any other reservation software provider, because everyone says their software is easy to use. You don't often see software described as "kind of complicated and hard, but it's worth it once you've read the manual and figured it all out."
Ease-of-use is subjective, and depends on your experience. I used to think my Sony Ericsson P1i was easy to use until I got an iPhone. Someone who flys Boeing 747s for a living, thinks that the 747 user interface is easy to use. For anyone else (including, probably, pilots trained on a different aircraft) it is overwhelmingly complex.
Counting the number of steps required to perform a task is one (imperfect) way of measuring ease-of-use. One reason why the iPhone is so popular is because you can perform tasks with fewer steps than you could on other smartphones: Pinch the screen to zoom in. Shake the whole device to undo. Setup email by just entering your webmail address and password.
At KeepMeBooked, one thing we do to try and keep our web-based reservation software easy to use is to see how we can reduce each task to the minimum necessary steps. Can we find a shorter/quicker way to let you do something? Let's have a look the process for setting up a new room in KeepMeBooked:
Click 'Add New Room' on the main calendar screen:
Then enter room name, capacity, price and save it:
Traditional hotel/guesthouse reservation software typically has a much longer process, involving 20-30 actions broken into four stages:
1. Create a room type
2. Create at least one room of that type
3. Create at least one rate plan
4. Apply that rate plan to the room type
Here are some fictional mockups showing the kind of process traditional hotel/guesthouse reservation software would have you follow to set up a new room:
Click 'add new room type':
Fill out some fields:
Then start creating a room:
Fill out some more fields, including the room type you created earlier:
Save that and then pick a rate plan to apply to this room:
You haven't got any rate plans yet, so create a new one:
Fill out the dates this rate is valid, and the rate for each night of the week:
Save that, and you are done. One new double room @ £65 a night successfully created. In 27 easy steps spread over 7 screens (count them if you like).
Even though it takes longer, the above process is still easy insofar that it is not hard. Not hard like calculus is hard. But it is still taking 27 steps when 3-4 would do. And you have to think a little bit at each step (Do rates apply to rooms? Or room types? What if I have a uniquely special double room? Is that a room or room type?). The longer a process takes, the more room for error, and for you to kind of forget where you are in the process and what, exactly, you need to do next.
If you are still with me, you are probably thinking, "you are cheating here, Bruce. If the room price doesn't need to vary at all, then you can have fewer steps. Your mocking 27-step process includes the option to vary the price by day of week but your 3-4 step process doesn't."
And that's true, but not everyone needs their prices to vary by day of week. If you don't need that flexibility, we try not to distract you with it at KeepMeBooked. That's one way we manage to reduce the number of steps: we make some assumptions about what you are likely to need at first, and let you add complexity later if you need it. So if you want prices to vary by day of week, you've got one extra click to expose the day-of-week pricing, then 6 numbers to enter your prices for the other days. That's still well short of the 27 steps in the example above.
Next up, I'll look at the process for entering a new reservation. Should this be 2 steps or 15?
Monday, 13 September 2010
Upcoming KeepMeBooked features
I haven't posted a list of upcoming features for a while, so here is a quick summary of features that we are currently working on, and when we (roughly) expect to release them. This list isn't exhaustive, but covers most of the features which we are most often asked about:
September:
Big things:
- Two-way link to Hotel Spider channel manager
- Provide facility to group rooms into types (so larger properties can manage pricing for similar rooms together, rather than individually) (DONE: 7th Oct)
Smaller things:
- Allow invoice/booking confirmation to be (re)sent directly from booking details screen (DONE: 1st Nov)
- Add 'created on' date to booking confirmation PDF (DONE: 14th Oct)
October:
Big things:
- Local language version of booking widget and guest emails
- Allow widget to accept bookings for multiple rooms at once
Smaller things:
- Multiple sales tax rates (and provide option to apply to room only, or room-plus-extras)
- Allow min stay to vary with season
- Provide more criteria for discount feature (so discount can be based on a code, a seasons, day of week, etc.)
November:
Big things:
- Make widget customisable (size, fonts, colours, etc.)
- Hierarchical user access (so junior staff can view bookings and check-in guests, but not change bookings, for example)
Smaller things:
- Printable version of calendar
- More reports
(UPDATE 1st Nov: clearly this schedule is slipping, Hotel Spider taking much longer than we anticipated, so everything else is happening later than planned. Although we have released a few features not on this list, to be fair. We are working on the "October" list now, with Hotel Spider work still ongoing. It is plausible that we still get all of the above done by the end of the calendar year.)
September:
Big things:
- Two-way link to Hotel Spider channel manager
- Provide facility to group rooms into types (so larger properties can manage pricing for similar rooms together, rather than individually) (DONE: 7th Oct)
Smaller things:
- Allow invoice/booking confirmation to be (re)sent directly from booking details screen (DONE: 1st Nov)
- Add 'created on' date to booking confirmation PDF (DONE: 14th Oct)
October:
Big things:
- Local language version of booking widget and guest emails
- Allow widget to accept bookings for multiple rooms at once
Smaller things:
- Multiple sales tax rates (and provide option to apply to room only, or room-plus-extras)
- Allow min stay to vary with season
- Provide more criteria for discount feature (so discount can be based on a code, a seasons, day of week, etc.)
November:
Big things:
- Make widget customisable (size, fonts, colours, etc.)
- Hierarchical user access (so junior staff can view bookings and check-in guests, but not change bookings, for example)
Smaller things:
- Printable version of calendar
- More reports
(UPDATE 1st Nov: clearly this schedule is slipping, Hotel Spider taking much longer than we anticipated, so everything else is happening later than planned. Although we have released a few features not on this list, to be fair. We are working on the "October" list now, with Hotel Spider work still ongoing. It is plausible that we still get all of the above done by the end of the calendar year.)
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
4 methods to accept payments for online bookings
As part of our occasional series to help you make sense of your different options for taking online bookings at your guesthouse or bed & breakfast, here we talk about your choices when it comes to taking online payments for your online bookings.
1. Deposit = commission
Some online booking software providers will take a deposit from the guest when they book online, and the software provider simply retains this as their commission. The guest then pays you the balance when they check out. This is very simple, and means that you don't have to concern yourself with the mechanics of online payments, but will work out expensive in the long run, compared to paying a normal card processing charge plus software subscription.
2. Booking provider acts as payment processor
Some online booking software providers will themselves act as a credit card payment processor, and collect payment on your behalf, charging you a card processing fee. They will make a margin on the card processing fee, but if their volumes are high enough, then you still might get a good deal. You'll want to understand exactly who has your money, and for how long, in this instance. If your software provider is also your card processor and they go bust, they might go bust with a lot of your money still on deposit (as apparently happened with Globespan/E-clear).
3. Process payment on your choice of payment gateway
Probably the most common method is for the online booking software provider to pass your guest through your own preferred payment gateway (e.g. SagePay or PayPal or Authorize.net). So the money goes straight to you, and you pay your gateway standar card processing fees. There are actually two versions of this method:
(a) Using a hosted payment page: (this is the method we use at KeepMeBooked) The guest is routed to a page hosted by the payment gateway to make their payment, then returned to your site afterwards. This is super-secure and super-easy for you and for the online booking software provider, as neither of you actually see the card number itself, so don't have to concern yourselves with PCI-DSS compliance (which doesn't just mean having a secure server, but complying with a truckload of other checks and audits). Also means if you use a widget-based system (like our system, KeepMeBooked, where the online booking process happens with your own webpage) the guest stays on your own website right up until the actual payment.
(b) Using an API call: The online booking software provider captures the card details on their own secure server, and passes them securely to the payment gateway for authorisation behind the scenes. So rather than be sent off to a hosted payment page at the very end of the process, the guest is handed across to the online booking software provider's secure server at the very start of the booking process, and then they stay there to make their payment. This requires the online booking software provider to be PCI-DSS compliant (because they are handling the guest's credit card details), and requires you to use a payment gateway with an API, which might be more expensive (e.g. a PayPal Website Payments Pro account, which includes API access, costs £20 per month, while their Website Payments Standard account (which doesn't include API access) is free.)
4. Validate card, but don't actually take payment
This isn't really a payment method, as no money changes hands. But it is still an option provided by some online booking software providers. The guest submits card details, but the card is not charged. The card is just validated to check that it is a real card number (which, if you are interested in this kind of thing, requires a Luhn Algorithm), and then discarded. For most guests, that's enough to ensure they turn up. But if they don't show up, you don't have any card details to collect any payment.
1. Deposit = commission
Some online booking software providers will take a deposit from the guest when they book online, and the software provider simply retains this as their commission. The guest then pays you the balance when they check out. This is very simple, and means that you don't have to concern yourself with the mechanics of online payments, but will work out expensive in the long run, compared to paying a normal card processing charge plus software subscription.
2. Booking provider acts as payment processor
Some online booking software providers will themselves act as a credit card payment processor, and collect payment on your behalf, charging you a card processing fee. They will make a margin on the card processing fee, but if their volumes are high enough, then you still might get a good deal. You'll want to understand exactly who has your money, and for how long, in this instance. If your software provider is also your card processor and they go bust, they might go bust with a lot of your money still on deposit (as apparently happened with Globespan/E-clear).
3. Process payment on your choice of payment gateway
Probably the most common method is for the online booking software provider to pass your guest through your own preferred payment gateway (e.g. SagePay or PayPal or Authorize.net). So the money goes straight to you, and you pay your gateway standar card processing fees. There are actually two versions of this method:
(a) Using a hosted payment page: (this is the method we use at KeepMeBooked) The guest is routed to a page hosted by the payment gateway to make their payment, then returned to your site afterwards. This is super-secure and super-easy for you and for the online booking software provider, as neither of you actually see the card number itself, so don't have to concern yourselves with PCI-DSS compliance (which doesn't just mean having a secure server, but complying with a truckload of other checks and audits). Also means if you use a widget-based system (like our system, KeepMeBooked, where the online booking process happens with your own webpage) the guest stays on your own website right up until the actual payment.
(b) Using an API call: The online booking software provider captures the card details on their own secure server, and passes them securely to the payment gateway for authorisation behind the scenes. So rather than be sent off to a hosted payment page at the very end of the process, the guest is handed across to the online booking software provider's secure server at the very start of the booking process, and then they stay there to make their payment. This requires the online booking software provider to be PCI-DSS compliant (because they are handling the guest's credit card details), and requires you to use a payment gateway with an API, which might be more expensive (e.g. a PayPal Website Payments Pro account, which includes API access, costs £20 per month, while their Website Payments Standard account (which doesn't include API access) is free.)
4. Validate card, but don't actually take payment
This isn't really a payment method, as no money changes hands. But it is still an option provided by some online booking software providers. The guest submits card details, but the card is not charged. The card is just validated to check that it is a real card number (which, if you are interested in this kind of thing, requires a Luhn Algorithm), and then discarded. For most guests, that's enough to ensure they turn up. But if they don't show up, you don't have any card details to collect any payment.
Specify 'From' address for automated emails, and copy in others
We've just added a couple of new fields under Settings > Emails:
Previously, emails to your guests from within KeepMeBooked (booking confirmations, reminders, follow-ups, etc.) showed as coming from the email address you use to login. Now you can specify the address you'd like us to use by entering it in the "From address:" box.
You can also copy yourself (or anyone else) in on emails that go out, so you can more easily monitor the emails that KeepMeBooked sends on your behalf. Enter addresses in the second field which you'd like to send copies of emails to.
Previously, emails to your guests from within KeepMeBooked (booking confirmations, reminders, follow-ups, etc.) showed as coming from the email address you use to login. Now you can specify the address you'd like us to use by entering it in the "From address:" box.
You can also copy yourself (or anyone else) in on emails that go out, so you can more easily monitor the emails that KeepMeBooked sends on your behalf. Enter addresses in the second field which you'd like to send copies of emails to.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Maximum stay and custom hold period for online bookings
We've just released a new version of the Settings > Online Bookings page. We have tidied it all up and also added two new features. Here's what it looks like now:
As well as minimum stay, you can now also specify a maximum stay for online bookings:
And (this is a much-requested feature), you can now decide for yourself how long you want to hold a room while a guest completes the payment process:
When a guest initiates the online payment process, we create a provisional booking which automatically expires if they don't complete the payment. The default expiry time was previously 24hrs, so you had plenty of time to contact a guest offline to secure payment if they abandoned the online payment process. Many users found this too long, because the room would not be bookable by anyone else during that time (unless you manually cancelled the provisional booking). Now you can choose a time that suits you: if you want to proactively contact guests who abandon the online payment process, choose a longer time period here. If you don't plan on doing that, and just want the room to release automatically ready for someone else to be able to book it, then choose a shorter time period.
Update: Forget to mention that we've also added 'First night' as a deposit option, so you can charge 1 night's stay as the deposit, rather than a percentage:
As well as minimum stay, you can now also specify a maximum stay for online bookings:
And (this is a much-requested feature), you can now decide for yourself how long you want to hold a room while a guest completes the payment process:
When a guest initiates the online payment process, we create a provisional booking which automatically expires if they don't complete the payment. The default expiry time was previously 24hrs, so you had plenty of time to contact a guest offline to secure payment if they abandoned the online payment process. Many users found this too long, because the room would not be bookable by anyone else during that time (unless you manually cancelled the provisional booking). Now you can choose a time that suits you: if you want to proactively contact guests who abandon the online payment process, choose a longer time period here. If you don't plan on doing that, and just want the room to release automatically ready for someone else to be able to book it, then choose a shorter time period.
Update: Forget to mention that we've also added 'First night' as a deposit option, so you can charge 1 night's stay as the deposit, rather than a percentage:
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