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Booking Website: Connect Your Own Domain

Florian
  • Updated

Learn how to redirect or connect your own domain to your Booking Website so guests can access the site through your branded web address.

 

How to use your own Domain for the Booking Website?

This will require you to:

  1. Make a few settings on your Hostaway Dashboard
  2. Go to your domain provider and update some records

Please note that the Hostaway Support team is not responsible for setting up your DNS. If you need assistance in setting up your domain records, please contact your DNS provider to expedite the process.

 

Set up your own domain

  1. When setting up the Booking Website, you will have the option of redirecting your own domain or subdomain to your Hostaway Booking Website.
  2. Go to Hostaway Dashboard > Booking Website > Settings > Advanced

 

Use Hostaway’s prebuilt domain (holidayfuture.com)

  1. Turn on the switch
  2. Choose a “subdomain name” (in this case, myrentals)
  3. Hostaway website will be hosted in that subdomain

    Booking engine 1.png

 

Use your own domain

  1. Choose this option if you would like to display the Booking Website on the main domain

  2. We will use the example for the domain myrentals.com

    • Turn ON the switch for “Use your own domain.”

    • Add your domain name without the “www”. For example myrentals.com

    • Save changes

  3. Then you should go to the Domain Provider dashboard and

    • Create/edit DNS record CNAME, with the name “www”. Copy/paste the CNAME from the Hostaway Dashboard which by default usually is proxy3.holidayfuture.com (See image below). Copy directly from the Dashboard and not from this user guide to be sure you are copying the correct value
    • Create/edit DNS A record, with the name “@”. Copy/paste the A record from the Hostaway Dashboard which by default usually is 52.37.108.119 (See image below). Copy directly from the Dashboard and not from this user guide to be sure you are copying the correct value

    • Remove from DNS settings any AAAA records pointing to the main domain (in our example www.myrentals.com)

    • Make sure you only have one A record for the domain/subdomain in the domain DNS Zone to avoid any issues with certificate creation

      Screenshot 2024-11-18 at 18.12.27.png


Use your own subdomain

  1. Choose this option if you would like to display the booking website on a subdomain (for example, book.myrentals.com)

  2. When choosing this option, you should

    • Enter the subdomain and domain names. For example, if you would like the Booking Website to appear on book.myrentals.com, then under the subdomain you should enter “book” and under the domain “myrentals.com”

    • Save changes

  3. Go to their Domain Provider dashboard and

    • Create/edit a DNS record CNAME, with the name “book” or whatever the subdomain is. Copy CNAME from Hostaway Dashboard, which is expected to be the value proxy3.holidayfuture.com or proxy3.holidayfuture.com. Please verify the correct CNAME for your account in your Hostaway booking engine settings:

 

DNS changes for Booking Engine Standard

After setting the domain in Hostaway for Booking Engine Standard, the required DNS changes must be completed immediately.

If the DNS changes are not completed within the next 8 hours, or if they are configured incorrectly, the customer must:

  • Correct the DNS configuration.
  • Go back to the Hostaway Booking Engine settings.
  • Save the settings again.
  • Wait up to 48 hours for the certificate processing to be completed.

 

Steps to activate reCAPTCHA (v2)

  1. Go to https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create

  2. Enter a Label to identify the site

  3. On reCAPTCHA type

    • Select Challenge (v2) > “I’m not a robot” Checkbox

  4. On Domains > Fill out the custom domain (e.g myrentals.com)

  5. Submit

  6. Enter the site key in the Hostaway dashboard

  7. Enter the secret key in the Hostaway dashboard

  8. Save the changes

  9. Wait 24 hours before the changes apply. It may take longer depending on the domain provider

 

Important

  • Changes could take up to 48 hours to be made, depending on your domain provider

  • You will need to activate Captcha

  • Ensure you have only one A record for your domain. The same A record can apply to both the root domain and the "www" subdomain; however, the SSL creation only requires one A record to be applied to the "www" instance of the domain.

  • Make sure you don't have any AAAA or ALIAS records in your domain DNS Zone file; otherwise, our system will not be able to process these changes

  • Booking Website pages that have payment links cannot be masked within a different URL, otherwise, the payment links will be greyed out for security purposes

  • The Booking Website cannot be used inside an iframe. A payment processing page should not be hidden inside another page for security reasons. What an iframe does is hide one URL inside another, which breaks security, and therefore, the Booking Website will not have the Book Now button active if it is used inside an iframe.

  • Due to security policy, it's not possible to embed your Hostaway website inside another website. This will prevent the booking from being processed. To complete a booking, the guest must be redirected to the Hostaway website to securely enter their information.

 

Some tools

  • If you don't know who your domain provider is, use who.is
  • If you would like to check if your A record/CNAME is propagating properly, you can use WhatsmyDNS.net
  • Once changes have been made, you will need to check if it worked properly via Incognito Window (for Google Chrome) - Incognito Window will force your browser to check if the domain redirects properly to Hostaway Booking Website (instead of relying on cache)

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