Importance of the website builder
Did you know 52% of travellers look at a property’s website before making a booking? Wouldn’t it be great to convert those visitors into guests by getting commission-free bookings? Our website builder and Booking Engine were developed specifically to help properties to capture bookings from travellers researching online. Most websites require HTML knowledge to do this integration and, therefore, hiring a webmaster, but with our website builder you don’t have to worry about any of that. It is so user friendly that you can easily integrate your Booking Engine on your own.
💡 It is important to link your Booking Engine to your website with a widget or a button to ensure that your website’s visitors can click to go to your Booking Engine to make a reservation and become guests.
Difference between your website builder and your Booking Engine
Your website builder allows you to create your property’s website with easy to use templates that reflect your property’s branding. Your website can be a marketing tool to advertise your property and capture the interest of all your potential guests. Your Booking Engine is a webpage (normally linked to your website) that captures and processes direct online reservations from your guests.
💡 Guests will typically access your Booking Engine through your website.
Link your website builder with our Booking Engine
In our SiteMinder platform, find your Booking Engine URL on Direct booking > Configuration > Guest display options > Booking Engine URL and copy it to your clipboard (you can paste it in a text app).
Open your website builder by going to Direct Booking > select Website Builder.
Click on the Booking engine.
Enter the Button label from the drop-down menu to choose the words that your potential guests will read in the button that will lead them to your Booking Engine. You have the option to choose between Book now and Search.
If you are using our Booking Engine, on the Booking engine provider drop-down menu, select Booking Button. (See the note below for other direct booking engines.)
Enter the complete URL of your Booking Engine, copied on step 1.
Under Open the URL link in, select how you wish your visitors to open your Booking Engine: on the Same page as your website or in a New tab.
The Configuration of a number of guests menu will set how your guest would search the number of guests on the booking widget of your website. You should enter the Max number of guests that you allow per booking and select the Field type :
If you select an Insertable number menu — guests will need to manually enter the desired number of guests on the booking widget.
If you select a Predefined drop-down menu — guests will need to choose the number of guests from a drop-down menu.
Click on Save. Click on Preview site to view the changes you have just made as a visitor would see them.
If you are happy with these changes, click on Publish changes to push the updates to your live website; otherwise, they remain saved but not public to your website visitors.
💡 If your direct booking engine provider is not our Booking Engine, you can select other direct booking engine from the list. If yours is not on the list, you should select Other ; bear in mind that selecting Other will cause the following actions:
Guests will only see the Book now button on the upper right section of the website.
The booking widget on your website will be hidden (the one where guests can choose the arrival and departure date when they book).
The Configuration of a number of guests menu option will be hidden.