Bookings

The Booking screen

A resource is what gets booked: a room, a service, a practitioner, a tennis court, a rental…

Your resources have their own screen: Booking, in the sidebar, just below Shop. The list is on the left, the open resource on the right.

1. Click Create a resource (or New resource once you already have some).
2. Choose a template from the gallery: Hotel, Cottage, Hair Salon, Doctor, Tennis, Bike Rental, Cooking Class… The template sets the hours, durations and form; everything can be changed afterwards.
3. The resource opens on the right, ready to be set up.

Each resource’s … menu lets you Edit it, Duplicate it, move it in the list or Delete it.

At the top of the screen, the How do you show your bookings? box sums up the essentials: a resource only appears on the site inside a page, with the Booking block. The Open pages link takes you there.

Setting up the resource

Its settings are spread across tabs, at the top of the resource:

• General: the Title, the Type (Time slots for appointments, or Date periods for overnight stays), the Status (Active or Draft), booking and cancellation deadlines;
• Schedule: opening days and hours, and the Closed dates;
• Options: the bookable units (rooms, tables, bedrooms, services), added with Add bookable unit, their capacity and duration;
• Pricing: the base price, a weekend multiplier, seasonal periods;
• Form: the number of people, phone number required;
• Emails: the sender, the confirmation sent to the customer and the notification you receive.

For a stay, Check-in days and Check-out days limit the possible days: for a Saturday-to-Saturday rental, tick Saturday on both lines. The calendar greys out the other days and shows the possible days. No day ticked: every day.

For a resource with time slots, the Schedule tab has a Durations offered section: the durations the visitor chooses from, for example 30, 60 and 90 min. Add some with Add a duration, remove them, reorder them, and choose the one that is preselected with Set as default. The base price applies to the default duration; the others are calculated pro rata.

In the Pricing tab, the Price by number of guests grid makes the price vary with the size of the group, for example €60 for one person and €75 for two. Each unit (room, court…) can have its own price and its own grid. The visitor sees the total for their group, and that is the amount recorded in the booking.

In the Options tab, the Show remaining spots switch shows the spots still free under each slot, for example “3 spots left”. This is useful when several people can book the same slot. The site counts the spots actually taken at every moment, and never sells one spot too many.

A group split across several units

A resource with several units (rooms, tables, bedrooms, kayaks…) also welcomes a group larger than each of them: it is split across several units, in a single booking. For a group of 10 with rooms for 6, 4 and 2, the visitor picks 10 people: TOWeb offers the free units at the chosen time, with as few units as possible (here 6 + 4), and the total price. A split stay keeps the same bedrooms for every night, and a group that fits in one unit chooses it as before.

The customer receives a single email naming each unit and its number of people, and its cancellation link cancels the whole group. In the management area, each unit appears with the note “Group: unit 1 of 2” and is managed separately. To make sure a group is never split, set Max. party size, in the Form tab, to the capacity of your largest unit.

Cancellation by the customer

The customer’s confirmation email contains a cancellation link. This link opens a page of your site that asks for confirmation: only its button cancels the booking. An email antivirus that opens the links of incoming emails therefore cannot cancel it in the customer’s place.

Showing bookings on a page

It is the Booking block that presents a resource to your visitors:

1. Open the page where your customers will book.
2. Type / and choose Booking.
3. Click the block: in the right-hand panel, choose the Resource to offer, then how it is presented. If you have only one resource, it is selected automatically.

The same resource can appear on several pages. The panel’s Manage resources → link takes you back to the Booking screen, on the resource shown. You can also create a resource directly from the block (Or create a new resource section): it then joins the list on the Booking screen.

In the Preview, the calendar follows the resource’s real schedule (opening days, closed dates, booking lead times), with sample availability: the real availability is calculated on the published site.

Syncing with Airbnb, Booking.com…

For stays, the iCal sync section gives you a calendar address to paste into Airbnb, Booking.com or Gîtes de France: bookings made on your site will block the dates there. The other way round, add their calendars under External calendars (iCal import): their bookings will block your site.

What you need

Bookings work on your published site, with a host that supports PHP. They are complete from the Premium edition upwards; in the Standard edition, they run in demo mode. You then follow your bookings in your site’s online dashboard.