Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Update to Search Forms

We've just added code to our search form so that your guests can now set their arrival and departure dates, and also the number of guests in their party.  Your availability will show now based on this extra filter, maximum occupancy.  Only available units that meet or exceed the occupancy searched for will be shown on your Reservation Page.



If you don't want to show this extra field you can just remove it from the form.  You can find the code in the sample code section at the bottom of your Reservation Page settings.

Hotel Style Reservation Pages

If your guests typically reserve by the TYPE of unit rather than a specific unit (or room) then you need a hotel style reservation page.  Setting this up is pretty easy, you just need to do a couple of things different than a set up where guests select by the specific room.


1. Set up Room Types

These are the different room types that you offer.  Set up as many types as you need.  For example, King, Queen, Suite, Double, etc.  The sort order matters here.  You should set the order to be the same as the order you want your types to appear on your reservation page.  Make sure you don't accidentally set any types to have the same sort order.  Each type should have its own order.




2. Add Units

Now add all your units of each type.  If you have 5 King rooms, a fast way to add this is to use the Bulk Add option which lets you add a bunch of rooms at the same time. 


Make sure you put the rooms names as all the same title.  In the room number column you should put each room's number.  But the name should be the same since this is what is displayed on the reservation page.  Later you can go into each unit and add a description and photo.  You ought to use the same description and photo for every room of the same type.


3. Create Reservation Page

The final step is to create a reservation page.  Click Add Page and be sure to select type of page as Hotel.  Make sure you select all the rooms/units at the bottom of the settings for your page.



You probably don't want to display your room names on your internal calendar since every type will have the same name. 





Under Settings Tab, Preferences you can set to display room numbers only.



This is the basics of getting your hotel style page structured.  Of course you will want to set up the rest of the program such as website messages, payment methods, automatic emails, etc.  We also have a video tutorial on this subject, which can be viewed here:
http://www.reservationkey.com/help-v2/videos/youtubeviewer.asp?v=2bJ1MVLklAc