I would like to ask if we can implement a booking system on our website using SOAP calls to your API? I am sure this is possible as in reality, you are doing this with your reception area. I really want a fully seamless booking system where the visitor fills in start date, duration and number of guests and then WuBOOK returns the results and we display them in the website as native results.
We have done this using other booking systems e.g. BookingCenter and it's key to our strategy.
I want to avoid using an iframe or widget, I want to achieve seamless integration. Can we do this?
sorry for my delay!! It's not 100% possible. The XML api would be very very difficult. But we have a plugin which can help: Alien Plugin. In few words, the Alien Plugin allows users to programmatically enter reservations inside the WuBook System, by also specifying the price of the reservation.
We then have the Fount System, which allows to read your room prices. By combining them, you can build your own engine. It will be more limited than the Official Online Reception, which implements:
* Discount codes
* Special offers
* Bids
* Room treatments
* Inline filtering per occupancy
* Feedbacks
and so on. In fact, it would be very, very, very difficult to expose all of these features via xml. Just to know: don't you want to use the Online Reception for a particular reason?
sorry for my delay!! It's not 100% possible. The XML api would be very very difficult. But we have a plugin which can help: Alien Plugin. In few words, the Alien Plugin allows users to programmatically enter reservations inside the WuBook System, by also specifying the price of the reservation.
We then have the Fount System, which allows to read your room prices. By combining them, you can build your own engine. It will be more limited than the Official Online Reception, which implements:
* Discount codes
* Special offers
* Bids
* Room treatments
* Inline filtering per occupancy
* Feedbacks
and so on. In fact, it would be very, very, very difficult to expose all of these features via xml. Just to know: don't you want to use the Online Reception for a particular reason?
That's disappointing. I don't see why it is a problem to build a calendar in a website that fetches room availability and puts it in that website. You are already using this technology. Perhaps not through XML but by other means. What does Wired do?
The Online Reception has a lot of redundant information and lacks branding. If it could be customised then it would be more valuable. The booking section is nice, very neat, but the top section with the text boxes is unnecessary and wastes space. Having decided to book, clients now want to see the options without the clutter. The actual booking engine part is very good - quick and easy.
It would be good to be able to customise the look of this page and, for those that want it, allow remove of the text boxes at the top. This area could then be used to carry information about the hotel, booking procedure, contact details etc etc.
These are just my opinions. Not everyone will agree of course :)
01-04-2014, 09:57 PM (This post was last modified: 01-04-2014, 09:59 PM by DC041.)
Yellow, it was good to talk via the chat system. Thank you.
I want to reiterate our aims. These are very important to us. Whether we use WuBook for all our resorts (12 currently) is determined by being able to work with wubook as we need / want.
Our aims are simple to define, complex to meet
Embed booking functionality, as much as possible, within our websites so we have a "native booking engine" for our clients
Be able to feed the channels with inventory at standard rate +% e.g. if the standard rate is £50 per night we feed £50 + 10% (which is £55) say to the channels such as booking.com etc.
I understand there is some complexity with regards 1. However, there are few professional solutions providers that cannot implement booking engines within websites so I am hopeful we will have a solution.
With regards 2, I have tried to find documentation on how to do tihs but so far cannot find anything useful. I think it is possible with Virtual Rooms but I need help in understanding and implementing this activity.
This is the help I need to choose WuBook over other solutions providers.
about point 2 there is an easy solution. Virtual plans! If you check it on Manage/Plans you'll find the 5 tools for prices, availabilities and restrictions management. Then click on rate plans and you can see you can create Virtual Rate Plans with percentage of fix variation from Tabla prices.
You can associate those virtual plans to the OTAs.
Anyway, remember you have to respect the price parity but I am sure you already know it!!
01-04-2014, 11:57 PM (This post was last modified: 01-04-2014, 11:58 PM by DC041.)
(01-04-2014, 10:40 PM)white Wrote: Hi Dave.
about point 2 there is an easy solution. Virtual plans! If you check it on Manage/Plans you'll find the 5 tools for prices, availabilities and restrictions management. Then click on rate plans and you can see you can create Virtual Rate Plans with percentage of fix variation from Tabla prices.
You can associate those virtual plans to the OTAs.
Anyway, remember you have to respect the price parity but I am sure you already know it!!
Thank you for taking the time and trouble to outline a solution for this issue. I can now see that it is possible to link the standard pricing / room rates to the OTA's. We will be able to try this once the OTA's confirm wubook as our channel manager and this area of the site goes live.
I attach an exmaple of CSS file. You can build your own CSS and we
will include it on the engine. Notice that the theme I attach is one
of the most complex. It includes also custom images.
A css allows you to:
1) hide contents
2) customize styles
3) many more
Probably, this is the best solution.
Another solution is Wired and/or Fount: this allows you to extract
prices and availability from our server. Then, you can use the Aliens
plugin to insert a reservation.
But in my opinion using our booking engine is not only very easier,
but very superior too!
Another solution is to describe in details what you dislike on our
Online Reception: we're always very careful about user wishes and
maybe your ideas will be good to globally improve.
Let me know if I can help you to better understand things!
Thank you for the css example. Is this associated with a hotel / accommodation I can view? it would be good to see how this css file affects what the visitor / guests sees.
I'm sorry but I don't remember the property. But you can try it out!!! While generating your widget, you can choose the layout your prefere, the one I've attached too:
I'm sorry but I don't remember the property. But you can try it out!!! While generating your widget, you can choose the layout your prefere, the one I've attached too:
Thank you. Yes, I have tried it and it works OK. It is better I think than the default - less clutter and nice colour scheme. I would need to do some changes to be able to use it in production, for example there are some images in the footer that need to be changed to our own images.
How is it best to modify this file. Perhaps you can also give me the default CSS so that I can see the differences. Possible?
