Forum assistance: Improvements to Pre-Book Links

Thanks to suggestions from users we've already made some big improvements to our new pre-book links feature, which was just released yesterday.

To summarize this feature, it allows you to enter a reservation internally and then provide a link to your guests that they can use to go to your Reservation Page to fill in their details and confirm the reservation. The room prices and rooms will already be selected.

The improvements are:

1. No longer necessary to create complicated links yourself.

Easily access the various links from the "More" menu in the Reservation Details screen.





2. The room(s) and dates will be pre-selected when the guest opens the link. All they need to do is fill out the Contact and Payment details.

- This applies to all of our booking pages, except at this time, the hotel style pages.



3. New merge codes to access the booking links.

- Build an email template using our new merge codes:
{{bookinglink}} - link to multiple units or single units page
{{bookinglink_calendar}} - link to calendar version page (if it exists as part of the reservation page specified to be used for the reservation).
- This makes it easy to create an "inquiry" reservation and then send off an email template which contains the link to the booking page.

The Reservation Page that will be used for the above links is the page that is set in the Reservation Page Settings as the one to be used internally,



OR

one that you specify, if you have enabled the feature to be able to do so.

In Settings tab, Preferences:

Future Enhancements

We are considering:
- any information typed into the guest details in the "inquiry" reservation will populate the contact form when the guest clicks through to the Reservation Page
- a way to be able to use this feature with reservations that block the calendar
- extending this functionality to hotel style pages
- a Copy button on the links box

Forum assistance: Prebook Guests and Send a Link to Collect Reservation Details/Payment

Now it is possible to create a reservation internally, adjust the room prices, and then email the guest a link to be used for entering their contact information and payment.

This makes it easy to negotiate a price over the phone or email, and then provide your guest with a link to your reservation page which has the negotiated room price.

In order to do this:
1. Make a reservation internally and adjust the room prices.
2. Set the reservation to a status which does NOT block the calendar.
3. Construct the link to use to email the guest:

Add the string "/idr|99999999" to the end of your reservation page URL (this feature is currently supported in our Multiple Units pages, both Calendar Mode and Availability Search Mode, and in our Single Unit Pages).

Make sure to replace "99999999" with the reservation ID from the reservation created in Step 1.

This will cause the reservation page to load with the pre-negotiated rates loaded for the unit and dates saved with the internal reservation.

The reservation created in Step 1 above is just a place holder reservation. A new reservation will be created when the guest books. This could be convenient if you wanted to send the same link to multiple inquiries, and the guest that books first would be the one to lock in the reservation.

Some example links:
https://v2.reservationkey.com/thompson/1089/s|2.1.2015|2.4.2015|85:0/idr|945617
- single unit page
- has dates and unit pre-selected

https://v2.reservationkey.com/thompson/byi/idr|945617
- multiple units, date search mode
- dates not pre-entered

https://v2.reservationkey.com/thompson/byi/s|2.1.2015|2.3.2015/idr|945617
- multiple units, date search mode
- dates pre-entered

https://v2.reservationkey.com/thompson/byi/c/idr|945617
- calendar search mode, dates not pre-filled

https://v2.reservationkey.com/thompson/byi/c|2.1.2015/idr|945617
- calendar search mode, dates pre-filled


In these examples the regular price is $100 per night, but we changed the price to $10 per night for a few nights:

Forum assistance: Now Specify Number of Children Per Room

Now it is possible on a room by room basis to exactly set the number of occupants allowed, including how many are allowed to be children.

This can be set from zero up to the total number of occupants allowed. If the number of children allowed in the room/unit is set to zero then the children drop down option is not visible for that room/unit on the Reservation Page.

This enhancement has been applied across all of our Reservation Page types (multiple units, single unit, calendar search mode, hotel style pages) and can be set in the individual unit settings as well as in the build add/edit pages.

Forum assistance: ReservationKey Change Log Added

There is always lots going on in ReservationKey, new features, enhancements, bug fixes, etc. But knowing what is happening in the system has been difficult. So now we've created a change log where we post very brief summaries of all changes, with links to related forum posts for further details.

This way, you can just periodically check the Change Log when you want to get up to speed with the most recent changes in the system.

The Log can be accessed from the menu icon in the upper right corner of the system.