In former times it was the printed catalogue – today those printed catalogues are commonly replaced by Internet pages.

. Everybody needs a website nowadays. Without it, i.e. without benefiting from the advantages of modern communication channels, a huge number of potential guests won’t even know you are offering available rooms – so lots of future customers will never have the chance to book your rooms.

This would be a most disappointing situation – and a very unnecessary one, too. Because especially the Internet permits those smaller properties such as guest houses, private vacation rentals or bed & breakfasts to establish their businesses and to distinguish themselves within market niches. In other words: the Internet is the medium to attract many more guests and to increase the property’s exposure considerably and explicitly.

It’s really easy now to make your own website – without any kind of programming knowledge – using Jimdo’s free website builder. Just sign up on www.jimdo.com and after just a few clicks you can create your own and individual website. It’s free, intuitive, and even really fun to use. All this is done web-based, i.e. the user can design and modify his homepage using any computer worldwide.

Users have the chance to pick one design from a variety of options and afterwards can customize their pages. Professional picture galleries and contact forms are just one example of the available features. The company Jimdo addresses small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), just as bookatonce does. While the percentage of customers within the tourism sector is increasing.

The cooperation between Jimdo and bookatonce now allows you to easily and quickly integrate the online booking function into your own website. Direct online bookings are now possible without paying high commissions to third parties. So we open up the direct and most efficient channel to your customers: the Internet.

The Jimdo user has a variety of online booking functions to choose from, so he can pick exactly the option that suits him best. One example is to embed the bookatonce availability calendar (room available/occupied), another one is the option to display a “traditional” request form. The most recommendable way is to offer your rooms or apartments directly and bindingly via your homepage.

Conclusion: bookatonce offers several ways to directly sell rooms via the Internet – now it is very easy to embed these options into your own website. As a result bookings are now received directly through your Jimdo-website without any detours.

Jimdo offers three different website packages. Beginning with the free basic package which is ideal to start experiencing. Or more sophisticated options such as the next level JimdoPro.

Give it a try – free of charge and integrate your personal online booking engine into your own website.

Is your website bringing in the customers and revenue you expect it to do?

What are you doing to keep increasing your sales?

If you definitely answer the first question with “no” and want to increase your business you should keep on reading. In order to have an appropriate answer to the second question you should consider the most important factors that contribute to boosting sales via your own website:

a.)    It is important to increase the numbers of visitors on your site (keyword: Search Engine Optimization: SEO)

b.)    You have got to raise the conversion rate on your page, i.e. to convert “lookers” into “bookers”.

One major parameter that influences this conversion is your Web Booking Engine (WBE) you are using. The online booking tool permits the innkeeper to initiate a transaction with the guest, so your website and especially the WBE are absolutely essential in online purchases conversion. US bed & breakfast experts unanimously agree: “The web booking engine is the main point of our websites (to sell rooms). There is absolutely no doubt that the online booking engine you use will influence how many reservations you get.”

And what are the common requirements from a booking engine that an innkeeper wants to be met? Your own experience probably tells you that a WBE should:

• permit an instant gratification, i.e. real time full confirmations of bookings made by guests
• make it easy for your customers to find available rooms (valuable room descriptions and quick booking process)
• be easy-to-use for your guests – bookings within a few steps that explain for themselves
• allow to process the incoming reservations: the best would be to have an interface to a guest and property management system that deals with further tasks
• be good looking, flexible and adapt to the design of the rest of your Internet presence
• offer different designs, layouts and provide a variety of widgets to be embedded into your website
• allow you to integrate it into multiple websites, including sites like facebook

The importance of immediate booking confirmations is tremendous. According to a survey realized by BedandBreakfast.com, 83% of consumers say they would probably or definitely book a property with fully bookable, instantly confirmed reservations online. You can imagine that you are going to lose a lot of customers if your web booking engine is not performing well.

bookatonce helps all innkeepers to leverage online business and to boost e-commerce. Below please find just some of the advantages that bookatonce offers to bed & breakfasts and inns. We confine this list to a few items. If you wish to know more about the bookatonce guest management solutions and web booking engine, please send us an e-mail to: sales@bookatonce.com.

bookatonce USPs – Important advantages of bookatonce at a glance

• The bookatonce booking engine can be set to match the exact appearance of your website. Everything is adjustable: colors – size – scaling
• We offer the Online-Booking Wizard free of charge. Only once a guest actually books a room via your website, we charge a small usage fee
• Your guest can either book via the booking widget (speed booking) or via the availability calendar (permitting both instant bookings and reservation inquiries by e-mail)
• Full two-way integration of property management system and booking engine. bookatonce is a carefree all-in-one solution:

a.) You can manage your rates and rooms in your bookatonce guest & room management system and display updated availabilities on your website
b.) all online bookings will automatically be retrieved and show up immediately in your reservation board

• It is up to you to offer additonal items (such as breakfast, parking or fruit basket etc.) to be bookable within your booking engine
• Assign codes that allow you to analyze your incoming reservations by distribution channel and booking type
• Credit card validation tool
• Upload pictures or promotional texts – visualize your offer and trigger the next booking!
• Permits your customers to set price ranges that narrow room search results: only rooms will be displayed that correspond to the guests’ budget
• bookatonce allows innkeepers to twitter their offers (directly out of bookatonce)
• bookatonce is multilingual, e.g. supports English, Spanish, German, etc.
• embed your booking engine in 3rd party sites such as facebook

The conclusion is crystal clear: bookatonce meets & exceeds the innkeeper’s expectations. In order to be competitive (and to even be able to compete with bigger hotels and chains), independent hotels need a very good booking engine.

bookatonce is more than an alternative – it is the solution for bed & breakfasts, inns and any kind of smaller property. Begin increasing your sales now!

bookatonce, the guest and property management system for smaller hotels and bed & breakfasts, was now selected as a Top 20 business application for September 2010 by GetApp.com, the business software search engine. Another indication of the growing popularity and acceptance of this software solution that helps innkeepers to capture more reservations.

bookatonce assists owners of family run hospitality businesses to manage their guests, rooms and availability more comfortably. The software is tailored to the needs of B&Bs and all other small hospitality businesses. It’s a web application (SaaS) with a free basic version including all essential functions such as inventory management and Online web booking engine (WBE). Using bookatonce’ web booking engine, your guests can book rooms directly on your website as the WBE can easily be embedded into your site.

This award is an acknowledgement to the complete team of bookatonce confirming that the efforts and dedication put into this software are now paying off. The award also encourages for future tasks such as bookatonce’ strategy to grow internationally. For users the award constitutes an important decision-making aid: it helps future innkeepers – when searching for a solid guest management software – to be guided to the appropriate solution: bookatonce is a management and reservation software developed by a winning software company.

The GetApp.com Top 20 Business Apps ranking is based on a composite algorithm that incorporates several criteria, including listing popularity on GetApp.com, number of reviews and comments, social media presence such as Twitter and Facebook followers, volume and quality of integration points, and input from analyst reports. The ranking is updated monthly.

About GetApp.com
GetApp.com is a business software app store for the buyers of enterprise applications. It offers a simple way for buyers to find, compare and evaluate applications and a low cost channel for providers to be found online. Software buyers come to GetApp.com for the convenience of researching enterprise applications and deployment solutions in one place, saving weeks from their traditional purchasing cycles. Application providers come to GetApp.com to reach out to a worldwide audience of active buyers, receive qualified traffic to their website and receive sales leads relevant to their target markets.