Booking Engine

The Booking Engine provides a beautiful website that is easy to design in just a few minutes. You can choose whether to accept inquiries, instant bookings, or both. The platform allows you to promote listings and highlight amenities, sell extras during checkout, create custom pages, have more control over privacy options, and enhance the guest experience. 

Create one or multiple Booking Engine

To create a new Booking Engine and manage it, you can use the dropdown in the Booking Engine settings page next to the Save button as shown in the screenshot below, and click on "Add Booking Engine"

Each Booking Engine is independent and can have its settings, design, and listings, as well as custom domains. To customize the Booking Engine > Click on the dropdown > Select the Booking Engine you would like to customize.

Booking Engine sections

Design

In this tab, you can customize the website's design on the left while previewing it on the right.

• Background Image/ Video - appears behind the header of the page and a search bar (called “hero section”). Must be at least 1000*400 pixels for images. We support .webm and .mp4 file types up to 10 MB for videos. The file size limitation is meant to ensure that the home page loads quickly.

• Colors - brand, middle, dark. Choosing the brand color automatically sets the other two, using a palette of colors that work well together. You can change the other colors if you wish.

• Fonts - Headers, text. Choosing the header font automatically sets the text font, but it can be changed if needed.

• Elements

  • Rounded/square - affects whether elements are rounded or not.

  • Shadow behind buttons - buttons and other elements pop out of the page, appear with a shadow and as if they have some volume. Turning this off makes the elements look flat.

On the right side, you can see a preview.

Listings

In this tab, you can select which listings appear in the Booking Engine and create categories.

• Listing selector - Selected listings will be displayed in the Booking Engine. There is a toggle for whether or not to automatically add new listings to the Booking Engine.
  
• Categories - Useful for promoting listings and organizing them into groups. There is no limit to the number of categories that can be created. As well, you can add a label to the listing card. The labels appear on the home page and search results, as well as on all listing pages and the listing itself. The label color can be chosen by you.
  
  
  
  

Pages

Within this tab, you can manage the pages located within the Booking Engine.

8 pages are pre-set and cannot be removed but may be hidden from the website if needed. Additionally, you can create custom pages and choose which ones are displayed within the top and bottom menus. Each page can also be optimized for SEO with specific keywords, which can override the general settings.

• Home - You can set the header and subtitle, which appear in the hero section. You can also choose whether to include the location filter and up to 5 amenities in the search bar. The body header, text, and image refer to the frame that appears under the categories.
  
• All listings - Allows setting up the order in which listings will be displayed in the Booking Engine. This affects the search results and can be used to promote listings.
• About us - Here you can set the header, background image, body text, and image
  
• Privacy policy - Allows to set the header and body text. Can be opened in a new window
• Terms & conditions - Allows setting the title, subtitle, and body text. Can be opened in a new window
• Contact us - You can set the title, subtitle, image, and body text. The contact information and social media links set here appear on the Contact Us page as well as in the footer throughout the website. You can add an optional contact form and choose to which email address it will be sent
• Display in Footer - You can also set which contact information details will be displayed in the Booking Engine’s footer. This should be made from the Booking Engine > Settings > Pages > Contact Us > Check the box associated with the info you would like to be displayed
• Reservation confirmation - The page is displayed when a booking has been successful. Allows setting the title, subtitle, body text, and image.
• Inquiry received - The page displayed when an inquiry has been successful. Allows setting the title, subtitle, body text, and image.
• Custom pages - Include images and text. Can be opened in a new tab or the existing one. Custom pages can also refer to external URLs, like your main website. In that case, they are used as links in the menu.
• Menu customization - Up to 5 pages could be added to each menu - one at the header and one in the footer.

Settings

In this tab, you will be able to set up general settings for the Booking Engine.

Basic settings

• Website name (SEO meta title) - This will be displayed in Search Engines and Social Media or it will be showing an error as Null when sharing.
• Favicon - allows configuration of the small icon in the browser tab
• Logo - displayed on the left side of the header on all pages
• Show map in search results - whether or not to display the map in the search results and all listings page. Turning this off will still display the listing located on the listing page
• Show the exact listing located on the map - when off, shows only the approximate location of a listing
• Show opt-in for promotional emails in checkout - when on, adds a checkbox to the checkout page where guests can opt-in to receive promotional email. When ticked, we update the preference in the guest book.
• Allow inquiries - whether guests are allowed to submit inquiries. Turning this off removes the “send inquiry” button from the listing page
• Allow instant booking - whether guests are allowed to book instantly. Turning this off removes the “book now” button from the listing page
• Hide credit card information section from checkout - when ON, the checkout page will not have a payment information section and the listing can be booked without payment information
• Amenities order - affects the order in which amenities appear in the listing cards and listing page. Can be used to highlight certain amenities. The top 10 amenities appear in the search results filters popup.

Advanced settings

• Custom domain - allows you to display the Booking Engine on your domain - Read more about custom domains
  
• Scripts - allows entering custom codes into the Booking Engine - Could be used for Google Translate  
• Analytics - for Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel
• SEO - keywords for the website. These are overridden by SEO settings on individual pages.
• Widgets - Embeddable Search Bar and Calendar widgets

Some Booking Engine pages

Search results

• The search results page includes a filter bar at the top where search parameters can be changed
• There is also a filter option for refining the search using the number of beds, bedrooms, bathrooms, or one of the top 10 amenities as defined in the settings
• Listing cards display some basic information on the listing, including the lowest price that is available on the chosen dates. If no dates are chosen, the listing base price is shown
• The map (if visible) shows location markers for the listings which can be clicked on to get to the listing page

Checkout

• Checkout includes the reservation and guest details on the left, including reservation date, number of guests, guest details, payment details, house rules, cancellation policy, and an optional message to the host
• Under the reservation details, there is a frame with the listing’s optional direct channel fees. When selected, they are added to the reservation amount
• On the right, there is a price breakdown and an optional field for a discount code