Everything you need to know about Benson’s sleek and simple-to-use Web Booking Engine.
Setting Up Your Web Booking Engine
You’ll only need one thing to get started with Benson’s web booking engine (WBE) and that’s a website for your property. Benson will simply provide you with a URL (website address) that you can plug into your own website which will allow prospective guests to create their own bookings directly into your property. Everything, from availability to rates, is managed and determined by Benson based on how you’ve set things up.
Before you get started on activating your WBE, it’s a good idea to have things such as room type descriptions and rate type descriptions set up as these will be visible to the public. You’ll also want to have a couple of pictures in your room type galleries so that your guests can have a clean and clear idea of what to select when creating their own bookings.
To get started on getting your WBE up and running, head over to the Settings cog and find the “Web Booking Engine” option and open it up. Before activating the Web Booking Engine, you’ll need to choose how you want your prices to show (per night or per stay) and you’ll also need to specify if you want the availability widget to show inventory or price. Once you’ve specified thse, you can activate the Web Booking Engine, click “Save Settings” and we’ll generate the link to your Benson Web Booking Engine.
You also have the option to default the number of nights that people using your Web Booking Engine will search on. If you generally only allow two-night stays, then you may want to default this value to two, for example.
You can upload an image on this page that will act as the background image for your Web Booking Engine. You can see how everything looks at any time by clicking “View Web Booking Engine” below the URL box with your Web Booking Engine link.
Your next step is to decide which room types and which rate types you want to display on the WBE. Benson will display every single room type you’ve created in the “Room Type” section and will, similarly, display every rate type you’ve created in the “Rate Type” section. On each section you’ll have the ability to show or not show them as you please. For example, if you only want a “Last Minute” rate type to display from 5pm onward, then you can go ahead and turn this on at 5pm and it will only display from then. You can then turn the rate type off when you no longer wish to show it to the public.
It’s important to remember that all the information displayed in the WBE is determined by what you’ve captured for your property. You’re always in control of how and what you’d like your guests to see on your WBE.
If you have an account with DPO Paygate and want to offer your guests a secure pay to pay their deposits up-front, check out our Paygate article here.