Button to add a booking

So, rather belatedly, we've added a big green "Add new booking" button to the calendar screen for users who don't like to click-and-drag:

We prevaricated for a long time about doing this. Because now that button is there, the most obvious way to create a new booking is of course to click the button. So we were worried that users wouldn't ever realise they can just add a booking by clicking and dragging across a range of dates in the calendar.

So we show this message after you use the button to create a booking:

"You can also create a new booking by clicking in the calendar and dragging across the required number of days."

While many user testers had no problem clicking-and-dragging (and naturally tried this when presented with a blank calendar) a few didn't think to click-and-drag so this button is for them. We didn't want people falling at the very first hurdle and simply having no idea how to add a booking.

I generally don't like throwing "tips" on the screen, if you do that too much you end up with the a reincarnation of the much-ridiculed Microsoft Office Assistant ("Looks like you are writing a letter! Are you too stupid to do it yourself? Can I really mess it up for you?").

But I think this situation just about warrants it. And once you click "Dismiss this message" you'll never see it again.

Quick summary of how KeepMeBooked handles online payments

I notice we don't have a good, concise summary of how KeepMeBooked handles online payments for guests booking online. So I've added it as a topic on our Getsatisfaction forum, and I'll post it here also:

When a guest pays for a room online, we route them to your choice of payment gateway (Authorize.net or PayPal in the USA; SagePay or PayPal in UK; PayPal elsewhere). You can select which gateway to use in Settings > Online Bookings > Require payment with booking:



If you don't already have a payment gateway account, then PayPal is the easiest (and often the cheapest) way to go. The best PayPal account type to use is called the "Website Payments Standard" account (in USA / UK; it has a similar name in most other countries). This account has no approval process, and no monthly fee, and the percentage processing fee is comparable to traditional card processing services. (You can use this link to create a PayPal account.)

Note that if you do use PayPal as a gateway, guests booking online don't need their own PayPal account to pay you, you will just be using PayPal to process their credit card payment. (In some countries, you need to change a setting to make PayPal account optional for the guest. See this post for more details on that.)

In KeepMeBooked, you just enter your payment gateway details in Settings > Online Bookings and we then route the guest to your payment gateway at the end of the booking process.

Payment takes place on your payment gateway's secure server, so we don't see or handle the actual credit card number. Our system just waits for confirmation from the gateway that payment was successful. We then record the payment amount and reference number with the booking in your KeepMeBooked account:



(Our system waits for 30 minutes for confirmation from the gateway that the guest completes the payment process. If they abandon the payment process, then we automatically release the room again for someone else to book.)


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Want to take confirmed online bookings, with online payments, without jumping through too many hoops? Try KeepMeBooked: web-based software for B&B and guesthouse owners to manage their reservations and take online bookings.

KeepMeBooked is used in 73 countries around the world!

We had our 1,000th trial signup over the weekend, so I thought I'd do a quick map showing all the countries where KeepMeBooked is used. 73 in total, and here they are:

Here's why charging commission for online bookings is unsustainable

Lots of B&Bs and guesthouses use online booking services which charge the B&B owner a commission for handling the booking. So it ends up costing the B&B owner more to receive an online booking than an offline booking, which is just a bit nuts, it should be the other way around.

Can you imagine if an airline charged you more to book online than to book over the phone? It would be crazy. Their low-cost, automated online booking system would be deserted and their call centre would be overwhelmed.

But that's exactly what's happening amongst those independent accommodation providers using commission-based services to handle their online bookings. Here's a table from a recent report aggregating data from one such service in the United Kingdom, showing how average room rates for online bookings are a whopping 11% higher than for offline bookings:

The guest is effectively paying a booking fee of £6 per night for the privilege of booking online.

Whether that's because owners are actually publishing higher rates online than they offer over the phone, to compensate for the online commission they have to pay; or whether they are just more ready to discount on the phone (because they know they have more margin to play with), is immaterial. Guests are paying more to book online than offline, and that's just topsy-turvy and ultimately unsustainable.

(By the way, I wonder whether the next quarterly issue of this report will still show the online vs offline split?)

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Paying commission on bookings from your own website? Try KeepMeBooked: commission-free online bookings for your B&B or guesthouse.

iPhone app released!

OK, folks, here's what you've all been waiting for:

The KeepMeBooked iPhone app is now available in the App Store. It is free to install, although you will need a KeepMeBooked account to use it. The app lets you:

 - View a calendar summary of your bookings
 - Create new bookings
 - Create new guests
 - View / edit existing bookings and guests
 - Do the usual cool things you'd expect like initiate a call to a guest from within the app

Enjoy!

PS: iPad version still in review process, but that should be live soon also. Update: iPad app also in the  App Store now.


UPDATE 8th Nov: we are aware of a bug whereby the calendar view in the iPhone app doesn't load correctly for some users and so doesn't display your the bookings. We are looking into the cause of this and will update here when fixed. Fixed now (9th Nov).

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Want to keep tabs on your B&B business while you are out and about? There's an app for that!

Emailing booking confirmations

Another little tweak: you can now manually send a booking confirmation email from within KeepMeBooked. Previously, guests booking online automatically received an email confirmation, but there was no easy way of emailing guests who'd booked offline.

Now you'll see a new button on the booking details screen:

Press this button, and an email will wing it's way to your guest immediately. The email text will be based on whatever you have in the "Email to confirm a booking" template (under Settings > Emails). You can of course customize this to say whatever you'd like.

Once you press the button, it changes to show you that the email has gone, and the date you sent it. If you need to resend it, then just click the "send again" link:

We've also renamed the "Create PDF" button, to the more meaningful "Show Invoice" (does the same thing, opens a PDF invoice in a new tab for you to print out if you need to).