With digital travel sales reaching $190 billion in the US alone this year, online booking is a necessity for any vacation rental website. Pair this with the growing trend of mobile travel research and booking (over 57 million US adults booked their trips via smartphone this year), and it’s clear that owners can’t stay competitive without it.
Guests are now savvier than ever, and will window shop until they find the best deal. Booking online makes the checkout process simple, convenient and secure for the guest – no matter which device they are using.
In this article, we’re going to look at how owners can accelerate their vacation rental reservations by adding a Lodgify booking system to an external website.
Lodgify booking widget allows you to accept reservations and payments on your website
When you create your website with a generic CMS, chances are it won’t come online booking ready. That’s because the website templates and themes don’t cater specifically to the industry your business belongs to.
However, by using Lodgify’s booking widget, you’ll be able to transform your existing WordPress, Wix or Squarespace site into a fully functioning reservation portal. The plugin guides travelers through the process and automates payment collection – all owners have to do is accept or reject the booking request.
Lodgify produces a personalized, embeddable code for you to copy and paste into your external website in order to start accepting online bookings and payments. And you don’t need to worry about design, either! You can easily customize your booking engine to integrate seamlessly with the style of your current website.
Lodgify booking system lets guests see real-time availability from all of your channels
There’s nothing more disappointing for an excited guest than finding out the availability listed on your website is wrong – meaning they can’t book the dates they wanted. When you’re juggling multiple listings on external channels, maintaining accurate calendar availability can be hard work. Unless you have a software which allows you to synchronize all your calendars and update availability across the board.
An added benefit of using the Lodgify booking engine is that vacation rental owners gain access to the other features of the software. In other words, they can simplify the management of all external calendars into one place using the channel manager. This greatly reduces the margin for any calendar errors, double bookings or other mistakes which can leave potential guests feeling frustrated and booking somewhere else.
Lodgify booking engine simplifies management of vacation rentals
When you have your own site and numerous listings on some of the biggest vacation rental websites, keeping on top of all incoming inquiries and requests can be a handful.
By embedding the Lodgify booking system to your existing website, you’ll immediately get permission to use the reservation system. The reservation system enables owners to control all bookings from one centralized calendar and inbox, which will save lots of time and hassle in the long-run. You’ll also be able to see, at a glance, any incoming reservations, blocked calendar periods and easily approve or decline bookings.
Being able to organize all of these tasks from one place saves owners hours of admin each week. It can also help to streamline the overall business process.
Your vacation rental business relies on bookings to make a profit. By having a company website which can actually fulfill its mission by accepting direct bookings, you’re halfway there.
Find out exactly how you can boost booking numbers by trying the Lodgify booking widget free for 14 days!
