Last presale questions

Hi Andrej,

Thanks for the detailed questions. We are happy to share our answers!

• Yes, whenever the booking status changes to “Confirmed” via the front-end website, maybe because of a valid payment received, an automatic confirmation email is always sent to the guest, as well as to the administrator(s). Additionally, if the booking status is “Pending” (“Waiting for the payment”) you can choose to send, or to not send, a summary email to the guest/admin. There’s an apposite configuration setting in VikBooking that allows you to choose when the confirmation email should be sent. Confirmation emails are generated through the apposite template file that you can edit from the third tab of the Configuration page. You can either edit the full HTML/CSS/PHP source code of the template file, or you can use the customizer tool to change colors and to add custom “Conditional Texts” inside the content of the email message.
• If you or your clients are willing to activate the Channel Manager, you will be able to decide which room-types to map/sync with the various OTAs. This means that you can always decide to keep some rooms out of sync with the CM so that they will only be available for bookings through your own website. There are many other solutions with the Channel Manager to always keep N units of a specific room-type just for the website and to close the remaining units on the various channels/OTAs, but for any questions related to the CM we kindly ask you to get in touch with our technical team for a better assistance.
• Invoices are only available in the Pro/Commercial version of the plugin. You can try to visit the official demo website to see a sample for an invoice, but even the PDF invoices are generated through an apposite template file that can be customized with custom contents and design. If you have any technical questions, we suggest getting in touch with our technical team through our website also in this case.
• Bookings can be modified at any time through the wp-admin section of VikBooking. You can apply discounts, set custom room rates or change the stay dates, you can add extra fees or services and update much more information. Once the reservation has been updated, it is possible to re-generate the invoice in PDF format (even in Electronic format for those countries that support an apposite e-invoicing driver), and the system will update the information by either keeping the previous invoice number, or by generating a new one, according to your own preferences.

We hope this clarifies your doubts! If not, feel free to get in touch with our team by using the contact form on our websites and we will be happy to assist you better.

The VikWP Team

Hi, guys! I have more – rather easy – questions.

1. I have various single/double rooms. Some, but not all of them can have a third bed. I would like to enter them as “double rooms” in order not to create a confusing “Three bedroom room” category. If someone ist entering “3 people”, these rooms should be shown, but also naturally be sold to people how are looking for a double room. How would you solve this?
2. A similar problem with Rnsuites (rooms with own bathroom): I have some which can accommodate 2 people, some 3, some even 4. I do not want to have three catogories “Ensuite for 3”, “Ensuite for 4”, right?

How do I enter this into VikBooking’s logic?

Thank you very much, this will help greatly!
Andrej

Hi Andrej,

Thanks for the detailed message. The possible bedding options for a specific room-type will determine how many units/categories you should configure in VikBooking. This is because for every room-type in VikBooking you can specify the guests capacity as well as the number of units for the total inventory. In case some of your “double rooms” can accommodate up to 3 guests, but some of them may only accept up to 2 guests, then you should definitely have one room-type with a maximum guests capacity of 3 and another room-type with a maximum capacity of 2 guests.

Even if this kind of configuration will create two room records, hence an additional room-type, it’s the only way to define the maximum guests capacity at room-level. This is because you can specify the total number of units available per room, not per combination of guests, and this works in the same exact way with any OTAs. Also, if you are willing to connect the Channel Manager, our suggestion is to adopt the same exact rooms configuration that you’re using for example with an OTA like BookingDotCom.

Configuring the Occupancy Based Pricing will not be an issue, because you could base your room/listing rates on a default/standard occupancy of 2 adults for your “double rooms”, and eventually define a discount for the “solo-rate” (single usage of 1 adult) or a charge for the third guest.

If you did not opt for this solution of having one room-type per guests capacity, then you may end up collecting bookings for 3 guests by exceeding the maximum capacity of the double rooms that can accommodate up to 3 persons. Instead, by opting for this solution, the double rooms that can accommodate up to 3 guests will also be available for bookings for 2 guests. As we said, the price would not be increased in this case. Please notice that the “Occupancy Based Pricing” offsets (OBP) can be defined from the rooms management page in VikBooking as long as the minimum adults occupancy is lower than the maximum adults occupancy.

The only advantage for adopting a split room-type configuration per guests capacity is just the safety of not overbooking a room-type for 3 guests. On a side note, the less room-types you configure, the faster all the management operations will be (rates, restrictions, availability etc..).

Please keep in mind that the Channel Manager requires to map every OTA room-type to one corresponding room-type of your website. This means that one “Double Room Standard” on the OTA will be linked to just one corresponding “Double Room” on your website created through VikBooking. In case you’re also willing to activate our Channel Manager service (E4jConnect), then adopting for your website the same exact room configuration as for the OTA will save you some time. This is valid also in case the occupancy or pricing differ between website and OTA.

Feel free to contact us again should you have any questions!

Thank you so much for another quick reply, VikWP!

I think I understand. Now I wonder: How do I call these “(not only) double room” category in VikBooking and OTAs? If I call them “triple rooms”, then people who are looking for a room for 2 will be confused if these are shown?

I am aware this is not reeeeeally your problem, but you did this way more often. How would I name this category then? I hope you solved this issue before and understand my confusion.

Thank you!

Hi,

That’s actually a fair question. According to our experience, in these cases the most common adjectives for accommodation categories come handy, such as “Standard”, “Large”, “Superior”, “Deluxe” etc.. Usually, a “Large Double Room” or a “Superior Double Room” can accommodate more than two guests, thanks to extra beds.

If you believe this naming technique will not confuse your guests, then it is probably the right way to go. In any case, users that are looking for a room on your website will be able to see a price difference for the various number of guests if you define the occupancy-based-pricing offsets.

We hope this helps!

The VikWP Team

Hi!
Of course this helps, as always! Do you also see a way to have “extra beds” as a feature? Like you can sometimes book “extra baby beds”, only for adults? In the sense that you look for a “room for three” and get shown a “double room” with “extra bed” as a feature?
Good idea? Even worse?

I am really looking forward to working with VikBooking daily!
Thank you,
Andy

Hi,

Extra beds could also be configured as additional services (options) in VikBooking. The options/extras can be eventually assigned just to some room types, and they support guests filtering, costs per night, per person and per stay. This would be definitely a valid alternative solution, even though working on the guests capacity and the Occupancy Based Pricing (OBP) offsets is recommended, especially if you are looking to connect the Channel Manager with some OTAs one day. Extra beds configured as an option or extra service are not supported by the OTAs, where they always require you to work with an OBP model.

Hello from Berlin! I apologize for reaching out again before we fully implement this system in our hostel. I’m really excited about the idea of revolutionizing our operations, but, to be honest, I’m also a bit nervous. That’s probably why it hasn’t happened yet…

I have a question about the process. Here’s the situation:

• We have a WordPress website that’s been up for nine years (it’s running the latest version of WordPress, of course) and it’s in need of a redesign.
• However, the redesign will take a few weeks, and we’d like to switch over to the new system in the meantime and use it on the current website if that’s possible.

Once the new website is ready, will I be able to migrate the booking system along with all our data to the new WordPress installation? How would that work? Is it a complicated process?

It would really help us to implement the new booking system first and then take our time to create the new website. Thank you so much for your amazing support and for the helpful advice I’m sure you’ll provide.

I apologize again for all my questions—I know you have thousands of customers, but for us, this is a major change that will significantly impact our daily operations. Thanks for your understanding.

Warm regards,
Andrej

Hello Andrej,

Thanks for your message. We understand the situation and we will try to share some suggestions.

VikBooking comes with a built-in function for generating full backup archives that solely contain the database and files (photos) information of that specific installation. This means that you can create a full backup at any time from the apposite Backups section in the Configuration page to download it, and to import it on a different WordPress installation of VikBooking, maybe on your new website. The website where you will be importing the backup only needs to have the free version of VikBooking installed, and by restoring the backup you will get the same exact configuration as the old website from which the backup was generated/exported.

Backups are extremely useful and fast when migrating data to a new website, especially because they allow to avoid any mistakes for manual migrations of database contents. Not only that, the data exported and then imported will be normalized for the new website, and so we actually discourage to opt for manual migrations.

Not sure if you have already configured the E4jConnect Channel Manager, but just for your information, the full backups of VikBooking will eventually include your Channel Manager settings and contents as well, so it’s a full backup of data for the migration to a different WordPress installation of VikBooking, and it’s exactly what you are looking for.

Thanks to this solution, you are free to start using VikBooking and any other service on the current website, and right before the new site will be ready to go live, all you need to do is create a backup from the old site, and then import it and restore it on the new website. The final operation in this case will be moving the new website to the final/production domain, and no data will go lost.

A different solution would be to start using VikBooking only on the new website, which is currently under development. Of course you would not be able to start offering the direct booking functionalities until the new website goes live.

We hope this helps!
The VikWP Team

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