What is the BNBForms Booking Form? And Why We Created It

The popular WordPress MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin reservation software for accommodations is now available for any platform/CMS as the BNBForms booking form!

BNBForms is a universal solution for accepting rental payments online. It’ll strongly benefit hotel, vacation rental and bed and breakfast owners who already have or just plan to create an online presence for their rental property.

At its core, BNBForms is a property booking widget that you can place on any website, no matter the platform it’s powered by – WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla or any other.

This booking widget is super flexible and powerful to serve your needs no matter the stage of your site development or a CMS you are on.

BNBForms as a booking form widget is a new thing on the market, but it’s based on our other WordPress-based solution that has already gained publicity and is loved by many property owners and web agencies.

The bread and butter of this booking solution is that it’s a two-in-one system: a property management and booking engine tied to the booking widget. So why did we decide to create it?

The idea behind BNBForms: new widget, time-tested core

The core software we use for BNBForms is based on our own plugin for WordPress: MotoPress Hotel Booking. This plugin is on top of the international league table of WordPress solutions for hotel and vacation rental bookings.

Since its advent in 2017, it has been gaining popularity, being used by 15K+ people so far.

So in broad strokes, we adapted our successful WordPress plugin to a wider range of native content management systems – to allow you to easily implement it on your website, no matter its CMS!

What’s the difference between BNBForms and the WordPress plugin it’s based on?

When it comes to the key functionality features, there is no difference – BNBForms gives you access to all the range of tools and functionalities as in the MotoPress Hotel Booking plugin. It’s that cool!

The only difference is in the implementation process. The Hotel Booking plugin works only for WordPress-based websites; BNBForms works for any site.

When you create a personal account with the BNBForms booking forms, however, the system registers it on our WordPress platform, so there is still some bond to WordPress, but only for the sake of access to the PMS (property management system) and booking settings.

In simple words, the booking software user area is where you cook while your independent site is where you lay the table. There is no interdependence, but how do you bridge the two?

How does this booking form work?

It’s very simple – when you create a BNBForms account, you need to apply your own booking rules to make the system work according to your requirements.

That is, you add accommodation types, configure availability by specific periods, set up seasonal and other types of pricing and rates, etc.

So you set the booking system from A to Z in your BNBForms account.

Once you are done, you’ll be able to generate a code snippet that ‘contains’ all your preferences and then follow a guide to paste it on your independent site.

So this code will actually embed a booking widget to your site to allow travelers to book an accommodation directly. To see and manage all the bookings you receive, you’ll need to log into your BNBForms account.

As you see, this makes the hotel booking form by BNBForms most suitable for those websites that have already taken care of the presentation of properties on their site in any preferable way.

Key features of the BNBForms booking widget

If you are new to this booking forms solution, let’s simplify your understanding of how the system works by highlighting some key features.

So what can you set in your BNBForms account?

  • Add an unlimited number of accommodations and set the pricing, rates, availability, capacity and booking rules for them. Unlike the popular travel platforms, such as Airbnb or Booking.com, we don’t charge any commissions except for the fixed subscription fee.
  • Configure tired pricing for individual accommodations. You can set rates based on multiple conditions, for example, the season or the length of stay. That means automatic discounts can be applied based on the number of travelers.
  • Include tax and fee charges into the booking; travelers will also see all the details of extra charges when placing a booking.
  • Add extras, such as a swimming pool or breakfast, and allow guests to add the needed services to their reservation when making a booking. A great way to generate some ancillary revenue!
  • Edit the look of a booking widget, for example, rename or hide fields as well as add custom sorting fields, for example, a ‘city’ or ‘room type’.
  • You can make guests pay online for their bookings, thus, automatically, secure and register their reservations. Through the BNBForms booking form, you can enable PayPal, 2Checkout, Braintree, Stripe, or Beanstream/Bambora. Guests can also pay you after arrival or via a direct bank transfer. You can charge a full booking sum or just a deposit. Additionally, you may go through the bookings manually or confirm them automatically. You can also create a mere booking request form and collect reservations.
  • You are not tied to just direct bookings when you have an independent website. BNBForms allows you to benefit from third-party OTAs like Booking.com or Airbnb as well thanks to the in-built channel manager! This is a fantastic tool to sync ALL bookings, no matter the source. BNBForms supports a two-way near real-time synchronization meaning the bookings you receive from third-party platforms are taken into account by your BNBForms account so that the booked accommodations and dates are blocked accordingly. And vice versa.
  • Designate booking rules, such as when and at what time guests can arrive and depart – you can do that for individual accommodations.
  • Create branded email notifications tied to specific actions – a booking placement, cancelation, confirmation, etc.
  • Download reports on bookings and view your booking and revenue stats.
  • Manage all received bookings: change their status, edit details (e.g. switch a room, dates or services), view payment history, and more. This will help you get paperless and still get all the bookings and payments registered.

And this is just a bird’s-eye view! We’re going to go through all the features, customization tips and more settings after the official launch of BNBForms.

Note: the solution is not aimed at hourly appointment bookings; the minimum booking slot is one night.

Popular integration platforms include:

Get started with the BNBForms booking form for free

BNBForms is not a mere booking widget, it’s a full-fledged vacation rental software that encompasses a property management system and booking software that make the booking widget work on any site.

With BNBForms, you get access to the time-tested solution that has proved to work for our WordPress clients and that has been meeting the owner and guest needs for 4 years now. With this BNBForms application, you just need to fill in the form to create your own free account to test all the tools.

At the time of writing this, BNBForms is a work-in-progress, we plan to launch the final version at the end of the summer, 2021. Create a free account and we’ll notify you once you can test-drive the tools yourself!