Are you wondering what is booking engine and how to integrate it into your hotel website? Look no further as in this post, we’ve prepared a detailed and easy guide for adding the booking functionality and enhancing modern hotel websites by using BNBForms.
It is easy to add to a website built on any platform or CMS, from WordPress to Squarespace, thanks to the automatically generated piece of code that you can copy and paste to your site’s header.
Since many hotel businesses and vacation rental hosts use Wix page builder to establish their websites, we picked this platform for today’s article as an example.
To display how the BNBForms booking engine software will work with your Wix installation, we chose a ready-made theme for hotels – Casa 3. Thanks to its full-width design and a variety of ready-made pages filled with content, this template can be a perfect start for both a vacation rental website and a fully-featured hotel online presence. This theme can be used to showcase your rooms, amenities, and all the benefits your hotel offers. Still, you can get started with any Wix template for hotels or even create a layout from scratch. Read on to discover how a booking engine can help your hotel business strive and get more direct bookings.
What is BNBForms Booking Engine?
Before we learn how to add the BNBForms hotels engine to your Wix website, let’s find out more about the reservation system first.
BNBForms is a flexible & adaptable booking engine that is connected to your hotel website with a simple yet very effective widget. From accommodation management to diverse options for room & amenity pricing, this Internet booking engine comes with a variety of options for any hotel or vacation rental owner. All of them are available via a simple pricing option starting from $16/month.
Here are some of the most notable advantages that may enhance your vacation rental business:
- Accommodation & amenity management;
- Customizable fees;
- Discount coupons;
- Online payment gateway support.
BNBForms acts as an external & customizable booking engine since it isn’t integrated into your website in the traditional sense. Unlike many popular Wix apps for hotel websites, this platform uses an embeddable widget. It displays a booking form with all the essential data for your potential guests. If you want to get started with this booking platform, we recommend you follow these simple steps:
- Sign up for a free 1-month trial with BNBForms.
- Confirm your email address by following the link you received in an email.
- Log in to the BNBForms dashboard using the provided credentials.
Top 5 Features of BNBForms
Now that we’ve learned what the BNBForms online booking engine is and how it works, let’s take a look at its key features. Being a complex booking and accommodation management system, it provides an impressive range of functional advantages. First of all, using such a system helps with improving direct bookings and boosting your site’s revenue. Additionally, it is a perfect way to control bookings from multiple websites and booking platforms since BNBForms supports synchronization with calendars of other booking channels. Aside from these features, other benefits can enhance your hospitality business’s online experience:
- Easy-to-use booking calendar;
- Payment processing;
- Automated email notifications;
- Channel manager;
- Custom booking rules.
Booking Calendar
One of the core features that BNBForms users get is the booking calendar that is updated in real time. First of all, it allows you as a hotel owner as well as your front desk employees to easily track the status of all your bookings and rooms. Moreover, by using this booking engine for hotels you can manually edit or update existing bookings when necessary. All your edits will be instantly reflected in the dashboard’s booking calendar and synced with the availability calendar visible to your site visitors. Besides, you can synchronize the booking dates with your Google or Apple calendar to always stay in the know of any changes.
Payment Processing
As a modern booking engine, BNBForms supports major payment gateways. From Stripe to PayPal and Braintree, your hospitality business can use all the advantages of online payments by enabling these and other payment methods. Besides, the hotel reservation engine also comes with a payment history feature to help you track all payments from your customers. Needless to say, you can enable guests to pay after arrival or even use a direct bank transfer method.
Automated Email Notifications
Another vital feature, which is essential to many booking engine hotel software, is connected with notifying your customers. By configuring email notifications, you can always inform your guests of their booking status, provide them with useful contacts, and remind them about their reservations. Most importantly, these notifications can be sent automatically saving you a lot of time for more important tasks.
Channel Manager
To get the most out of your bookings and make sure you don’t miss any of them, this booking engine also comes with the BNBForms channel manager. It allows you to easily sync with the majority of booking channels by importing the iCal files to the BNBForms dashboard. Some of the supported OTAs (online travel agencies) that you can sync your booking calendar with include Airbnb and Booking.com. By providing your customers on every platform with updates on available rooms and their reservations, you can ensure the best level of service for them. This is achieved by synchronizing the latest booking data and posting it automatically on your favorite OTAs without even leaving the BNBForms UI.
Custom Booking Rules
One more essential and highly asked-for feature in booking engines is the customization of booking rules. With BNBForms, you can set rules for check-in & check-out days and block accommodation availability for certain dates. This may be of great use if you run a vacation rental business and can’t welcome your guests personally. Besides, booking rules can help you plan your time and suggest to your potential guests the best date and time for booking a room at your property or hotel.
How to Add BNBForms Booking Engine to Wix in 3 Steps
Needless to say, the BNBForms booking engine is a powerful solution for any hotel website. But how do you integrate it into the online presence of your hotel to get direct bookings?
In the quick guide written below, we’ll explain how to display the booking form on any page of your Wix website in just a few simple steps. Please note that the tutorial requires you to have an active account on BNBForms and a registered Wix account with an installed template for your hotel website.
Step 1: Copy the Widget Code
To get started with the booking form integrations, you’ll need to copy the widget code first. Navigate to the Widget script section in your BNBForms dashboard to do it.
Step 2: Add the Code to Your Wix Website
Go to the Settings section of your Wix account and navigate to Custom code in the Advanced settings. Then, paste the code you copied from your BNBForms dashboard to the provided textbox. After that, you’ll need to choose where you want to display the booking form and save the changes you’ve made. It is recommended to be placed in the header area for the best view and performance. Note that Wix requires a connected domain name and a published site for you to add a custom code to it.
Alternatively, you can add a button or menu item to your Wix website and link your booking form using it. To find the link, navigate to the “Widget Script” section in the BNBForms dashboard. In the upper right corner of preview area, you’ll see the “Open in new window” button. Copy its link by clicking RMB and choosing “Copy link” in your browser’s context menu.
Step 3: Check the Published Website for Results
After inserting the code into the header or any other part of your website, you can check how it looks. You should see the Book Now button that makes the booking form appear.
How Does the Booking Process via BNBForms Work?
If you have added and checked the appearance of your form on the hotel’s website, you may wonder how it looks for your site visitors. Let’s take a closer look at how the form works and what information it provides to your potential guests.
- Check-in & check-out dates: After pressing the “Book now” button, your customers will see a simple form with two fields that will allow them to check for the availability of a room on a desired date. When pressing on any field, a calendar will appear. In it, your soon-to-be guest will see available dates marked green.
- Adults & children: The default form design allows your clients to specify the number of adults and kids to find the fitting room option in a few clicks.
- Recommended & available accommodations: Next, the BNBForms booking engine for hotels will provide your website visitor with the best option for them depending on the data they provided earlier. They will also see all available room options on the same page alongside their photos & rates.
- Booking a room: To reserve a room your client will need to press the “Book” & “Confirm Reservation” buttons to proceed with the selected accommodation option.
- Guest & reservation details: On the next page, your visitor will need to provide various data to confirm their reservation, such as:
- Number of adults & kids;
- Preferred rate (Refundable or non-refundable);
- Extra services (e.g. cleaning or parking);
- Coupon code (if applicable);
- Guest’s personal information (name, surname, email, etc.);
- Payment method.
- Terms & conditions: When providing their data, your guest will also need to accept the terms and conditions and press the “Book Now” button to complete their reservation.
Conclusion
We hope this guide to integrating the BNBForms booking engine into your hotel’s Wix website has helped you establish a better online booking experience for your guests. Whether you run a small Airbnb or a well-established hotel, with this booking system, you’ll have all the necessary tools for managing your accommodation services & amenities and staying connected with your guests and their preferences. This is possible thanks to:
- Ease of use: While providing a wide range of features, BNBForms is easy to use thanks to the thought-out dashboard design and easy widget integration. This results in a comfortable user experience for website visitors and hotel employees.
- User-friendly UI: An integral part of a successful booking engine is a user-friendly UI that allows hotel owners to control every aspect of online booking even if they have no prior experience with it. This is 100% true for BNBForms as this booking engine’s UI is designed to provide easy access to booking essentials and extras for hotel & vacation rental owners.
- High accessibility: A functional and user-friendly booking engine also needs to be accessible to provide the necessary features to clients with all experience levels. The mentioned booking solution achieves this by combining a straightforward approach to design with an extensive selection of tools that any hotel owner may want to implement on their site.
- Varied functionality: Lastly, BNBForms comes with a diverse functionality range. Whether you need accommodation management or price rate customization tools, you can get it instantly without installing any third-party apps. Thanks to the multiple features and affordable pricing plan, even an established hotel can enhance its core processes by adding the widget to its site and increasing the direct booking potential.
FAQ
What is a booking engine for hotels?
A hotel booking engine is a flexible and multifunctional software designed to simplify reservation management for hotel owners and front desk employees. Such a solution provides a variety of tools to manage the booked rooms, control your inventory, customize prices and seasonal rates as well as connect with other booking platforms via a built-in channel manager.
Why is a booking engine important?
Using a booking engine for a website can not only provide you with the right tools for your reservations. It will also simplify your work and make it more secure. With such booking software, you can show available rooms and amenities in real time. Besides, it helps with confirming new bookings instantly to decrease the waiting time for your customers. In addition to the abovementioned benefits, there are other reasons to use a modern hotel booking engine:
- Enhanced direct bookings: Many people prefer to book directly from the hotel’s website rather than use third-party platforms that may be less secure or even unavailable. You can also reward those who choose to book directly with an extra discount to encourage them to use your website in the future.
- Improved guest experience: Modern booking engines provide a more efficient booking experience for guests allowing them to reserve a room from any device without contacting you via email or phone.
- Global reach: With an online booking engine like BNBForms your clients will be able to reach you from any location due to your site’s booking capabilities being available globally. This is especially useful for frequent travelers who are on the go and want to book a room in a few clicks.
- Revenue management: One of the key reasons to consider using a booking engine is its revenue management capabilities. You’ll be able to track all payments and transactions alongside offering special deals and upselling.
What are the must-have booking engine features?
With an impressive amount of features modern booking engines provide you may wonder what the essentials are. While some of them, such as the mobile-friendly design and user-friendly UI are quite obvious, there are others that you may not know about especially if you’re new to online booking. Some of the most widely used features by hotel owners are:
- Secure payment processing: When booking a room online, most of the guests prefer to pay for it in advance. Such a feature is often expected and is available as a default option in many apps that provide online booking functionality.
- Integration with PMS and online booking channels: To enhance the usual range of features, you may want to look for a booking engine with PMS integration and a built-in channel manager. Both of these features will ensure better automation of booking updates, helping you to avoid any errors or inaccuracies.
- Real-time availability calendar: One of the key features necessary for any reservation engine is a visual calendar that displays room availability in real time. When booking an accommodation service, many guests want to see the dates available for reservation for each room of your hotel. By displaying such a booking calendar before a potential guest makes a booking, you can save their time and help them choose a proper room option faster.
- Multicurrency support: Finally, any modern booking engine, app, or plugin needs to provide support for multiple currencies. This is especially required if your hotel works on a global scale. Luckily, with a variety of online payment gateways integrated into many room reservation solutions, you don’t need to worry about adding this feature to your site’s booking functionality.
What are the advantages of a booking engine for my hotel guests?
Having a booking engine for website of your hotel isn’t only useful to you, it is also good for your guests. Many hotel customers look for a smooth booking experience when browsing hotel sites. The software designed for online booking can help even your new clients reserve rooms faster and provide a secure space for this process. Additionally, most booking solutions are customizable and can adapt to your existing site design perfectly.
