Important to know:
This article provides technical information about integrating your booking engine with your property’s official website. If you are using SiteMinder’s website builder, you can skip these instructions.
If your property doesn’t have a website and you want to have one, you might be interested in SiteMinder’s website builder. Check more about SiteMinder’s website builder.
Your booking engine has been developed with ease of implementation in mind. Take into consideration that some website providers require HTML language knowledge to integrate your booking engine. Due to the difference in implementation of each website provider, if you are having trouble with the integration on your property’s website, contact your property’s website provider or web developer.
Before following the steps outlined in this article, we recommend creating a backup of your existing website before making any changes. Contact your website provider for more information about how to do this.
Link your booking engine to your property’s website so that your website’s visitors can access your booking engine and make reservations by themselves. This will save you valuable time and help to increase direct bookings.
To link your booking engine with your property’s website, follow the steps below.
Step 1: locate your booking engine’s URL
Locate your booking engine’s URL via Direct booking > Configuration > Guest display options > Booking engine URL.
Click on Copy link to copy it to your clipboard (you can paste it in a text app).
Your booking engine URL varies depending on where your property is located:
For properties in Europe, Middle East, Africa or America, your URL will look similar to this: https://direct-book.com/properties/channelcode
For properties in Asia or the Pacific, your URL will look similar to this: https://book-directonline.com/properties/channelcode
In the above examples, your ‘channelcode’ normally contains your property name.
Step 2: choose how you want to integrate your booking engine with your website
To integrate your booking engine with your property’s website, you can either use widgets (such as a “Book now” button”), or embed your booking engine into a page on your website.
Widgets
Add a widget on your property’s website that links to your booking engine
Widgets are great tools to direct your website’s visitors to your booking engine. Find below all the widgets you can use:
Book now widget — add a “Book now” button to redirect your website visitors to your booking engine. For the button text, add “Book now” or choose to add other custom text.
Date selection widget — prompt your property’s website visitors to enter their Check-in and Check-out dates and number of Adults and Children, before clicking on Check availability where they will then be redirected to your booking engine.
Availability grid widget — allow your property’s website visitors to interact with a grid that shows your booking engine rates and availability. The grid includes information such as room details, inclusions, and photos. By clicking on Book they are redirected to your booking engine. (The availability grid widget is not mobile-friendly.)
Custom widgets — add custom data on widgets. For example, you can modify the code to show a set number of nights on the availability grid, or to open the booking engine in a preferred language.
Embed your booking engine on your property’s website
Embed your booking engine on your property’s website to give visitors seamless access to your booking engine — your booking engine will open via a window inside your property’s website.
This option is redirection-free and, therefore, keeps your branding across the entire booking process. Not seeing a URL change enhances trust in your potential customers, making it more likely for them to book. (When accessed via a mobile device, a full-screen version of your embedded booking engine is loaded).
Step 3: check the website integration guide
The Website integration guide contains HTML snippets for each type of integration you want to do. Click here to access your booking engine’s Website integration guide.
The Website integration guide contains the following information:
Important details to know before starting
How to create a custom link or widget
How to customise a widget
How to embed your booking engine into your property’s website
How to add a custom code to your website
How to track your booking engine activity with Google Analytics
Step 4: add the Javascript library to your property’s website
The Javascript library has crucial information to make the link between your booking engine and your property’s website work. Follow the Website integration guide to add the Javascript library on all pages that contain a link or a reference to your booking engine.
Note:
Make sure to add the Javascript library before the closing tag in the source of your property’s website.
If you are using Google Analytics, and to ensure that Google Analytics is recognised correctly and cross-domain tracking is working, make sure that this script is placed after the snippet for Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.
Step 5: copy and modify the HTML snippet you want to use
In the Website integration guide:
locate the HTML snippet you want to use;
replace any part of the HTML snippet containing ‘channelcode’ with your property’s actual channel code (check ‘Step 1: Locate your booking engine’s URL’ to locate your channel code).
Step 6: paste the HTML snippet into your property’s website
Follow the steps outlined below:
Contact your provider to find out how to add HTML snippets to your property’s website source code.
Insert the modified HTML snippet in the source of your property’s website as instructed by your provider.
Note:
The source code is the programming behind any webpage. A page’s source code (HTML), contains how all the elements on the page are handled and paths to the page’s images or videos.
Some providers are friendly when modifying source code, some require HTML language knowledge.
Due to the difference in implementation of each website provider, if you are having trouble with the integration on your property’s website, contact your property’s website provider or web developer.
Step 7: test the integration
Access your booking engine from your property’s website to test the integration. Your booking engine should open successfully; otherwise, ensure you have followed all the steps above.