Wix Hotels Review, Pros & Cons

Wix Hotels is a popular booking management app that comes free of charge with Wix, one of the top-rated website development platforms. Indeed, by offering an easy-to-use page builder with a diverse variety of apps available in its store, the mentioned platform provides all the necessary tools to create a stunning website for your hotel or short-term rental property. In today’s article, we’ll take a look at the updated Wix Hotels app in detail, compare it to its previous version, and learn more about the features it provides.

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Wix Website Builder: Helping You Craft a Notable Online Presence

Before we explore the advantages of this app in detail in our Wix Hotels review, let’s take a look at Wix first. If you have ever wondered how to develop a responsive website without coding, you’ve most likely heard about this platform already. Aimed at helping users worldwide build websites visually, Wix for hotels provides a multitude of ready-made and responsive website designs. It also has a selection of templates for hotel websites and short-term rentals. Furthermore, with each of such themes being easy to edit thanks to the included visual builder, you can be sure to get the top-notch online representation of your hospitality business that can boast of:

• Diverse design capabilities and customization options;
• First-class security measures for your site;
• Free web hosting option with custom domain (premium plans only);
• A range of integrated SEO tools and online marketing solutions;
• Powerful analytics engine & multiple supplied payment methods.

Obviously, these features alone are great for helping anyone get started with website development using Wix. Aside from allowing you to present your business effectively, the platform also includes diverse automation with easy-to-follow tutorials on how to use them. Additionally, Wix provides multiple communication options, ranging from online chat to email addresses associated with your account & domain. Lastly, you can enhance the functionality with numerous apps by Wix and third-party developers.

What is Wix Hotels

Wix Hotels is a comprehensive online booking system offering a wide range of functional advantages to hotel owners and short-term rental businesses worldwide. Previously developed by Wix, this app was reintroduced in collaboration with HotelRunner, one of the leading providers of booking solutions for the hospitality industry. The result of this cooperation proved to be beneficial and helped Wix improve their hotel management app by a mile. While still in its beta, the app provides a variety of features, including the following:

• Rate plan & reservation management;
• Diverse room types & tax categories;
• Customizable deposit policies;
• Bulk inventory updates;
• Multilanguage support.

Registered Wix users can add Wix Hotel for free by navigating to the App market and installing the app in a few clicks. Afterward, you’ll need to configure it by adding your hotel information, rooms, rates, and additional services to display on your hotel’s website. While you can try the app for your site for free, enabling all of its features will require a Business plan starting from $17/month available as a part of the Wix Hotels pricing.

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The Advantages of Wix Hotels

Now that we’ve learned more about the essence of the app and what it provides, let’s continue the Wix Hotels review by looking at the various pros and cons of the application. This solution offers everything you’d expect from modern hotel booking software. Whether it’s simple and effective reservation management or seasonal rate customization, there are multiple advantages available with the reworked version of the app:

• Integration of multiple channels and online booking platforms;
• Simple online payment processing;
• Easy room & amenity management;
• Built-in guest database;
• Customizable room search rules, reservation settings, and more.

These are just a few features included with the recently released version of Wix Hotels. For example, you can also add multiple currencies for diverse countries. Moreover, this app logs all your actions to make tracking easier in case of any unwanted changes. The Wix Hotel software also offers effective promotion code generation and mass updates of information for your rooms. Additionally, the developers supplied Wix users with a bunch of email templates to make creating reservations as well as canceling and rescheduling them a smooth task.

The Downsides of Using the Wix Hotels App

Like any website-oriented app, Wix Hotels isn’t devoid of disadvantages. For example, unlike some modern booking solutions, the mentioned software doesn’t allow booking individual beds. Also, some actions aren’t performed on your Wix website after completing the reservation and your potential guest may be redirected to another Wix Hotels domain for a short time. However, due to all Wix sites being a part of the same ecosystem, this redirection isn’t quite obvious, especially to your first-time visitors. Other disadvantages you may need to consider include:

• Payment features require a Business account;
• Wix Hotels channel manager is available for a separate payment of $15/month after a 2-week free trial;
• No multiple room booking;
• Extra services are not available for separate rooms.

Comparing the Old and New Versions of the App

As we mentioned earlier, Wix Hotels has been reworked by HotelRunner to offer better stability and more features than the previous version created by Wix. Thus, the partnership between these two companies allowed them to provide an improved experience for hotel managers, vacation rental owners, hospitality industry workers, and guests. Despite still being in active development and not being available worldwide, the new Wixhotels app provides a bug-free experience with extensive functionality.

Unlike the newer version, the app developed by Wix provided a simpler experience with only the key features present. Also, according to the reviews of the previously released app, its interface included some UI glitches and provided no synchronization between desktop and mobile versions of the Wix for hotels dashboard as well as:

• Lack of constant updates;
• Limited reservation editing;
• Various functional flaws connected with the website UI.

To address these and other issues, Wix partnered with the abovementioned HotelRunner team to create a solution suitable for the modern hospitality industry.

BNBForms as an Affordable Wix Hotels Alternative

If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative with a similar set of features, we recommend trying out BNBForms. Available as a separate solution, this reservation management platform is fully compatible with Wix and any other web development platforms. In addition to providing a customizable booking form, it allows you to edit room types separately without affecting your site. From detailed analytics and reporting to seasonal rates and synchronization with popular OTAs using the iCal format, BNBForms has a lot to offer:

• Step-by-step booking wizard;
• Automated email notifications;
• Season & date management;
• Booking widget customization;
• Unlimited bookings and properties at no extra fee;
• Easy-to-edit settings of taxes & fees.

Here is a quick guide on how to add BNBForms to a Wix site: https://bnbforms.com/document/how-to-add-bnbforms-widget-in-wix/ 

Moreover, this booking platform allows you to integrate online payment gateways. They include Stripe and PayPal, and you won’t even have to pay for a premium Wix Hotels pricing plan. Regardless of how complex your hotel website is, you can add the booking form to it without any trouble just by adding the provided code to any page. In addition, BNBForms tracks all the reservations, payments, billing, and booking requests within different sections of a single dashboard. With its user-friendly UI, you’ll get used to managing your hotel or vacation rental property in no time.

BNBForms provides a free trial of 30 days with the price of $16/month afterward. Using a simple & effective pricing approach, you’ll never get confused with the multiple plans & subscriptions. Still, you’ll always have all the necessary tools for booking management available.

Conclusion

We hope this overview of the Wix Hotels app has helped you discover more about its diverse features, the ways of integration, and how it can improve your Wix-based hotel website. With its varied benefits, the updated version of the app can be of use regardless of what accommodation services you provide. Here is why you may consider this solution to enhance your hotel website:

• Easy control of all your reservations: Thanks to the built-in reservation calendar with channel management support, you can easily track all bookings from your Wix website as well as other platforms, such as Airbnb or Booking.com;
• Effective rate management with discount codes: Create seasonal pricing and provide your guests with promotion codes to ensure their loyalty and encourage reservations even in low seasons;
• Staying updated with all inventory changes in real-time: The included inventory calendar section allows you to track all booking changes and room availability without having to manually update website pages. You can also filter rooms by rates, room types, and other criteria to quickly find what you need.
• Support of secure online payments using integrated payment gateways: With any Business plan from Wix, you get access to multiple payment methods and online gateways offering your guests a way to easily pay for the rooms they reserved with just a few clicks.