booking software
5 tips to save time each day by making your website more efficient
Your website is where most of your customers find out about your business. You are pleased to have a great website that attracts people to your business, but is this website helping you in your day to day work? Did you know that a good website can save you numerous hours of unnecessary work?
Time is running out! Follow these 5 tips below to help save time for both you and your customers.
1. Make your website straightforward
When it comes to designing your website, the old adage KISS is a good advice: “Keep It Simple, Sweetie”.
If you think your customers call you because they want to talk to you, think again! Customers want to find the important information as quickly as possible without the hassle of calling or sending an email. If it is difficult to find the key information on your website, then often people will get frustrated and call you and waste some of your precious time. Read the rest of this entry »
WebReserv’s launches its new booking/availability calendar 2.0 in French and Spanish
Recently WebReserv launched its new booking calendar 2.0. The calendar has been designed to give an enhanced solution to the needs of small businesses. It comes with an updated, responsive design that works well on all devices, a shopping cart that allows customers to book several items at a time, and fresh new look and feel. The new calendar is here to stay! WebReserv is now working on translating its new version into the main European languages. The new calendar already supports online bookings in French and Spanish.
The WebReserv system allows you to add multiple booking calendars to your website. Adding the French and Spanish languages allows businesses that have a multi language website to show the booking calendars in a different languages.
“We have many businesses in our European Market that need to process bookings in the most common languages in Europe, such as English, Spanish or French.”, says Martin Israelsen, founder of WebReserv. He continues, “It’s great to be able to provide the system in other languages so that people in Spain or France can make bookings without effort.”
“We have numerous development plans for the system, but since our launch in Europe, we have been focused on making the system work well with European currencies, languages and payment providers, trying to make WebReserv as complete as possible.”, concludes Martin Israelsen. Read the rest of this entry »
Adding the Booking Calendar to your Facebook page
It is now possible to embed the new booking calendar on your Facebook page. Check our Facebook page to see how it looks.
The set up process is fairly straightforward with an end result being a fully functional booking system for your business available on your Facebook page. Just follow the steps.
Note: It is also possible to embed the booking calendar 1.0 following the same method.
1. Locate the app on Facebook
Once you have completed the setup of your account, you can now add it to your Facebook page. To embed the WebReserv booking calendar into Facebook, go to the following Facebook Application page http://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus, and click on “Add Static HTML to a Page”.
Hourly Reservations Made Easy
The WebReserv booking system can be set up for many types of applications, including bed & breakfast booking system and tour booking system. This article explains how to set up different time rules for hourly reservations. Hourly reservation rules are often used for boat rentals, bike rentals, paddleboard rentals, jetski/waverunner rentals and similar.
The hourly rental is designed to be used for rentals where the customer can select a start time and a variable amount of time for the rental, such as 1, 2 or 4 hours or a full day.
When the customer books an hourly rental, they will see an hourly calendar that shows availability for each hour during opening hours.
Here’s some examples of what the booking calendar can look like, depending on your configuration.
Multi-day/overnight rentals
5 BIG Mistakes B&B Owners Make And How To Avoid Them – Part 5
At WebReserv we have been working with the B&B industry for several years trying to provide the best service to our clients. We know that a good booking system is a valuable tool for the B&B owner, but we are also aware that there are many other aspects (marketing, communication, sales, accounting, etc.) that the business needs to refine and improve in order to be successful.
Yvonne Halling is a B&B owner and a WebReserv client. She runs a successful B&B, and wants to share her experience and knowledge with other B&B’s. She writes about the 5 most common mistakes that B&B owners often make. Each week, we will discuss one mistake and give tips on how to avoid them. Here is the 5th mistake.
Not Realising That Customers Having Money in Their Pockets To Spend, That They Could Be Spending With You!
There is an old saying that a customer is a customer is a customer, to me this opened up the prospect of actually taking additional money from my B & B clients for non B & B goods and services.
I literally jumped in the air when I got this one, as it had never really occurred to me before and it fitted so well with my new found ‘how can I give customer value at an even higher level’? Read the rest of this entry »
5 BIG Mistakes B&B Owners Make And How To Avoid Them – Part 4
At WebReserv we have been working with the B&B industry for several years trying to provide the best service to our clients. We know that a good booking system is a valuable tool for the B&B owner, but we are also aware that there are many other aspects (marketing, communication, sales, accounting, etc.) that the business needs to refine and improve in order to be successful.
Yvonne Halling is a B&B owner and a WebReserv client. She runs a successful B&B, and wants to share her experience and knowledge with other B&B’s. She writes about the 5 most common mistakes that B&B owners often make. Each week, we will discuss one mistake and give tips on how to avoid them. Here is the 4th mistake.
Having NO CLUE about the Life-Time Value of a Customer
How many customers are you looking for? I know that might sound like an odd question but do you know that in marketing terms it’s massively easier to get someone to buy something from you that has bought from you before?
Now this is not me sharing this, I learned it in my long lonely nights learning about marketing and if you think about it, it is obvious. Here’s how it works, it’s called – Read the rest of this entry »
5 BIG Mistakes B&B Owners Make And How To Avoid Them – Part 3
At WebReserv we have been working with the B&B industry for several years trying to provide the best service to our clients. We know that a good booking system is a valuable tool for the B&B owner, but we are also aware that there are many other aspects (marketing, communication, sales, accounting, etc.) that the business needs to refine and improve in order to be successful.
Yvonne Halling is a B&B owner and a WebReserv client. She runs a successful B&B, and wants to share her experience and knowledge with other B&B’s. She writes about the 5 most common mistakes that B&B owners often make. Each week, we will discuss one mistake and give tips on how to avoid them. Here is the 3rd mistake.
“Who do you want to serve?
When helping B&B owners who want to make more money and have more fun, the first thing we look at is who they really want to welcome to their homes, and this is often a sticky subject.
Question: Who is your ideal guest?
Answer: Everyone
The problem when we try to be all things to all people is that we then become no-one to everyone. We scatter our energy and focus and end up not really making anyone happy, including ourselves. We become another ordinary, forgettable B&B experience and that doesn’t build our businesses, nor does it serve our guests. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Big Mistakes B&B Owners Make and How To Avoid Them, Part 2
At WebReserv we have been working with the B&B industry for several years trying to provide the best service to our clients. We know that a good booking system is a valuable tool for the B&B owner, but we are also aware that there are many other aspects (marketing, communication, sales, accounting, etc.) that the business needs to refine and improve in order to be successful.
Yvonne Halling is a B&B owner and a WebReserv client. She runs a successful B&B, and wants to share her experience and knowledge with other B&B’s. She writes about the 5 most common mistakes that B&B owners often make. Each week, we will discuss one mistake and give tips on how to avoid them. Here is the 2nd mistake.
“Do you know what your guests want, what they really want?
Many B&B owners I speak to insist that having “stars” or ratings by organisations who grade them are the most important reason people choose them, and I’m here to tell you today, that it’s not!
Not at all! Read the rest of this entry »
Why WebReserv is a great booking system for small hotels and hostals?
For the lodging industry, the ability to handle their bookings online has been a great way to save time and increase revenue. For the customer, booking online is safe and easy to do. Small and medium businesses in the lodging industry know the importance of having an online booking system available to their customers. The issue, however, is that many of existing booking systems out there on the market are expensive and require the business to have technical knowledge to set it up. It is just not feasible for a small hotel or hostel to put in the investment for one of these systems and hire an IT professional to set it up. Most times, smaller hotels and hostels are run by a few people and do not have the resources to put into a complicated booking system.
For these reasons, WebReserv has been the much needed solution for these types of businesses to manage their online bookings. Small and medium businesses choose WebReserv for its affordability and ease of use. The system is designed to manage your bookings right from your own website. Not only that, the process is seamless for the customer, which keeps them coming back year after year.
We talked to Adam Gudofsky, owner of the hostel Banti Tarifa in Spain, and asked him to explain why WebReserv is a great booking system for his business.
What was your main concern about buying WebReserv?
I didn´t really have any concerns over the system itself. It was more a general concern of using an online reservation system for a small hostal.
What did you find as a result of buying WebReserv?
Within the first week of using the system I was already impressed! I was receiving reservations at times I would not normally be able to. As Banti is a small place with only 6 rooms, the hours of our reception were limited to 09-13h and 17-20h. Using WebReserv has given me the chance to take reservations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I have also been able to save around 20% of phone bills. We used to call clients back who left messages, many of which would be international calls. Our voicemail states our opening hours and also refers clients to our website to make their reservation. The amount of voicemails we receive has gone done dramatically.
What specific feature did you like most about WebReserv?
For me the best feature of WebReserv is its customer care. Since day one I have always been well taken care of. For those of us who are not computer savvy, on online reservation system can seem, at first, to be very complicated to set up. This was not the case with WebReserv. I was provided with all the support I needed at no extra charge. Until this day I continue to receive outstanding support.
What would be three other benefits about WebReserv?
1.) Less time spent on the phone
2.) A very useful way to establish a database of clients who have made previous reservations.
3.) Simply everything has become more efficient both from a business and client perspective.
Do you think WebReserv is an adequate tool for businesses of your industry? Why?
For my industry WebReserv is not an adequate tool, its essential!
Get your free WebReserv account: WebReserv official website
More information about Banti Tarifa: Banti Tarifa
Why WebReserv is a great booking system for Bed and Breakfast businesses?
As business owners the road to success is long and full of obstacles. Businesses must focus on many important operations in order to succeed such as marketing, sales, accounting, communications, and for the lodging industry, booking management. Bed & Breakfasts are often run by one or two people, so the challenges that come with owning any business can seem greater when a small staff is in charge of all aspects of running a business. It can feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day to attend to these tasks when most of the day is spent on attending to reservations, customers, and preparing rooms and meals.
Technology can be a solution to these challenges for the B&B owner, especially when it comes to booking management. How can an online booking system make the difference for a B&B owner? Why is WebReserv a great online booking system for the B&B industry? In the following article we will try to provide some answers.
Today, most people prefer to book online because it is faster, easier, available 24/7, and the confirmation is immediate. Using phone and email as the main means of taking reservations is not enough anymore and can lead to a loss of reservations and a loss of revenue. For this reason, it is a wise business decision to utilize the Internet as another method for bookings because that is the only way to make the most of all the booking channels.
Booking management is crucial for any lodging company and B&B owners are very focused on making their day to day operations more efficient, so they can spend their time wisely. Online bookings are a great way to achieve this. Yvonne Halling, B&B owner and founder of bedandbreakfastcoach.com has been using WebReserv booking system for one year, she tells us about her experience with online bookings. “I make money while I sleep! People from all around the world can visit my site, and if they like what they see, they can book and pay a deposit immediately, regardless of their time zone. I then have a record of their reservation with any special requests, and more importantly, they have this too. Systematisation helps me a lot with record keeping, so I can see how many bookings I have this week, this month or this year so far, and I know already that so far, for the first two months of this year, I am 25% up on last year.”
It is very common these days for businesses in the lodging industry to allow clients to book a room online, without having to call or send an email. However, B&B owners often do not have the same financial resources to make a large investment for some of the online solutions available on the market. Simply put, cost is an issue and there needs to be a solution to meet the needs of B&B owners and be economically feasible. “This was the first time I had purchased an online booking system and I was worried that by spending a monthly amount on an online booking system that didn’t meet my needs was daunting” says Yvonne Halling. WebReserv was designed to help small and medium businesses to automate the booking process. At the same time, the price of the system is reasonable for B&Bs. Yvonne says “One of the benefits of the system is that it is very affordable”.
B&B owners are passionate about their businesses. They love serving their customers and spend their time making the home a place that people want to return to year after year. Often times, they don’t have the time or resources to spend designing their own online booking system. Martin Israelsen is the founder of WebReserv, he explains “The system has been designed with an easy setup process, because we knew that what developers may consider simple, quickly becomes complex for DIY (Do It Yourself) business owners who are trying to get their products and services online. From the very beginning we received many requests from B&B owners and we loved to see that without any technical knowledge, they were able to go live with online bookings in few hours. There is no need to have a server or to install any software, everything is simple and works online.”
When asked the question, “Do you think WebReserv is an adequate tool for businesses in your industry?”, Yvonne Halling answers, “I think WebReserv works very well for B&B owners, because of its simplicity and ease of set up and their support for new users is very good”.
Choosing WebReserv as the solution for all your online booking needs is a good choice for your business. It is affordable, easy to set up, simple to manage, and you have the support of WebReserv throughout the entire process. Making your booking process seamless and automated for your customers will afford you the time to spend on what you love: taking care of your home and your guests.
How to setup up a booking system for Bed & Breakfast?
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More information about BedandBreakfastCoach:
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