We have made some changes to the design of the Calendar & Booking section of your Lodgify backend hoping that it makes it more intuitive and easier for you to manage your bookings. Further, we have improved our Calendar import/export tool.
Lodgify User Interface Update
We have updated the user interface of our Calendar & Booking section in the Lodgify Backend giving it a cleaner and neater display. Let us know what you think about the new design changes by commenting on the blog post below! We are super curious. Here is a list of the most important changes:
1. Reservation system split into tabs:
Your reservation system is now split up into 3 tabs: a) Calendar b) Bookings c) Settings
2. Calendar tab
Within the Calendar tab, tentative bookings are now marked as yellow in your Calendar. In this example, John has tentatively booked the only unit, hence 0 units are available out of 1
3. Bookings tab
Within the Bookings tab, inquiries and bookings with the most recent guest response show up on top in your booking tab. Bookings that you haven’t read yet are displayed in bold. You can use the filters to only display unread messages
A reply icon is displayed on the left indicating whenever you have replied to the last received guest message
You can manually mark a booking as read/unread or as replied/unreplied
4. Settings tab
Within the Settings tab you can now find all your e-mail notifications where you can edit email templates and add canned responses
Lodgify Calendar Import/Export Tool
In the Settings area, you also find our improved Calendar Import/Export tool
Users that have already been using the calendar import/export function in the past will be familiar with the process. The Calendar Import/Export tool allows you to connect your external calendar or reservation system to your Lodgify Website to ensure that your Lodgify Website always correctly reflects the calendar of your external source. Also it allows you to automatically export Bookings that were made via your Lodgify Website back to your external calendar or reservation system.
The main difference that you will find now is that using the import/export tool the Lodgify calendar will be updated without creating bookings. The imported unavailabilities appear in light grey on your calendar. Please note that you cannot edit or remove imported unavailabilities from Lodgify. You would need to do that directly from your external calendar. For more information on how to use the Calendar Import/Export tool, read our support article here.
Lodgify Channel Manager
Lodgify users, who want to keep using Lodgify as their central reservation system and main calendar, can continue using the Lodgify Channel Manager to connect to external booking channels.
API (for developers only)
We published our Availability API in addition to our Booking API. This will allow developers to do a two-way integration between your external reservation system and your Lodgify Website. The API documentation is located here: https://www.lodgify.com/docs/api.