Bookassist Booking Engine Upgrade

Bookassist is committed to continually improving its technology and services and we are very proud to announce a major upgrade to our award-winning booking engine technology. The Scottish team have been working their way around all of our Scottish clients to make sure that they can benefit even further from the great new design and layout changes

As we are making the changes and because the upgrade is quite significant, we have been taking the opportunity to review the hotels' current setup in the booking engine and we optimising them for the new booking engine layout. The following gives you some flavour of just some of the improvements this upgrade has brought to the users.

Visual redesign and modernisation

Visually, the design of entire display for the booking pages has been significantly improved to give a fresh modern look.

• The design makes better use of fonts, font size, colour, layout and style improvements to help make the display more appealing and hence help conversion. 
• Across all pages of the booking engine there is a redesigned top strip indicating the steps 1,2,3 to completion more clearly.
• We can control colouring much better so that the system blends seamlessly with your website.

Usability improvements for your customers

• We have added animations of the customers' actions, for example smooth opening and closing of information sections etc, all of which gives a more dynamic feel to the system and also helps guide the customers' eye to where it should be looking.
• We have placed a strong emphasis on focus: because the booking options are usually quite complex, we want the customer to be able to focus on exactly what they want so when a user is interacting with a particular room, the system "lifts" it off the page so that it stands out more prominently, as Figure 1 shows.

Figure 1: Focus in the booking engine

Better price comparison

One of the key issues in a booking engine is being able to quickly scan prices across multiple room types and packages. The new design improves this significantly

• We have changed the color and size of price display for easier viewing.
• We have redesigned the room description strips with more prominent pricing.
• We have redesigned the ‘variations’ (room grouping) display into horizontal strips per variation with better photo and details display, plus consistent design with regular room strips for easy comparison as Figure 2 shows. 

Even Better Dynamic Discounts

A strong selling point of Bookassist's World-leading booking technology is the Dynamic Discounts function. This booking engine upgrade takes this winning concept even further.

• Using a calendar-like display, we show a price range (from aaa - to bbb) on non-stay dates and we clearly show the discounts that are available on those dates.
• We display a clear "advertisement" listing the types of Dynamic Discount that are available if you change your dates, as figure 3 shows
• You can now open/close Dynamic Discounts on specific dates instead of just on arrival dates. 
• You can have a discount price of €0 to provide an extra free service instead of an actual discount.

Figure: Dynamic Discount advertising

Photos

This is the first phase of photo improvement in the Bookassist engine, we expect to significantly enhance this in the very near future. For now,

• Photos have been restyled and replaced by flexible-width photos that automatically re-size with the page width. 
• We now store your hotel's booking engine images on the Amazon cloud so that image files are automatically copied to servers all over the world and are "locally" accessible in your customers' country. This provides much faster download times for your customer and improved display of photos.

Customer feedback on errors and omissions

We have strongly enhanced the way in which we give feedback to your customer when they enter incorrect information or attempt to book unavailable rooms etc.

• Message wording in all error dialogues are much improved to help the customer better understand the problem and point out the options to resolve the error quickly.
• Error messages are better "localised" on the page to where the specific problem is so that resolution is easier for the customer.
• Clearer handling of all errors helps solve issues quickly and gives better conversion

Some Integrated Examples

Here's a few examples of how well integrted your booking engine should be. No linking out, no change in URL's and designed to match the look and feel of your brand

• Wheatsheaf Hotel Swinton
• Gailes Hotel Irvine
• Old Loans Inn Troon
• Callater Lodge Braemar
• Mar Hall near Glasgow
• Cairngorm Hotel Aviemore
• Inveran Guest House Nairn
• The Inn at Lathones Fife

More Information

For more information on how Bookassist can improve your DIRECT bookings call us on 01292 521404 or mail Bookassist Scotland

VisitScotland.com online booking changes - further information

Here's the latest advice from VisitScotland regarding the switch over next week to driving books direct to hotel's own websites.

In our opinion this is the way that it should have been and should be in the future. It is therefore important that accommodation providers ensure that the link from VisitScotland is going DIRECTLY to the booking page on their website and not just the homepage.

If you don't know what the URL is off your booking landing page contact your web booking engine provider for some assistance.

An example on our own test web site for the mythical but very competitively priced Celtic Links Demo hotel gives an idea - the customer wants to check availability and make a booking so make it easier for them. Ensure they don't have to go searching for it and use three more clicks than they have to!

Click on Best Available Rate Book Direct with Celtic Links Demo Hotel

Our demo hotel uses Bookassist Booking Engine to power the online availability and the booking engine will be one of those integrating with the proposed VisitScotland availability search in June 2013.

Anyway, the advice from VisitScotland's Chief Executive Malcolm Roughead is as follows

Dear Provider,

I wrote to you recently concerning forthcoming changes to the way in which bookings are processed on www.visitscotland.com. The purpose of this email is to give you further advice on what you should do in preparation for the removal of our online booking functionality (including Web in a Box) on 13 December 2012.

Consumers will still be able to find your business through the search function on VisitScotland.com and it is vital that you continue to keep your details up to date, accurate and have a description that best portrays the products and services on offer to the consumer. You now have the facility to set up a link directly to your own preferred online booking website.

To recap, from 13 December 2012 we will be removing our online booking functionality (including Web in a Box). In future to make a booking consumers will have the following options:
Call or email you directly to make a reservation

• Contact you directly via your own website
• Click on a new ‘book’ button providing a direct link to your online booking website
• Or continue to use the VisitScotland Contact Centre or a VisitScotland Information Centre to make a booking.

VisitScotland.com is, and remains, a showcase for Scotland, boasting a rich source of information for visitors and reaching out to some 14 million internet users. Our international and UK & Ireland marketing will continue to drive visitors to the site using a range of print, online communications and campaigns all year round.

What we advise you to do

Keep updating your room availability and pricing on the VisitScotland Extranet as our Contact Centre staff and VisitScotland Information Centre staff will continue to use the search facility to find available accommodation for customers. Information on how to do this can be found in the extranet user guide.
If you have a property management system or online booking website we recommend that you add a direct link to your booking website - for a short step by step guide on how to add the link to your listing go to http://vslastminuteoffers.briefyourmarket.com/Goto/90987-1257-HRZYIG .

If you do nothing just now, you can still receive booking enquiries via telephone, email and links to your own website. In this case, we would only advise that you ensure your contact details are up to date.
If you would like to talk through these changes in more detail, please call one of our Advisors on 0845 602 3779 (available Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm) or email updates@visitscotland.com.

From June 2013, our national tourism website, http://vslastminuteoffers.briefyourmarket.com/Goto/90987-1258-0NYTTY will offer integration with a number of accommodation booking systems.

If you use one of the systems that integrate, then your own pricing and availability will display on visitscotland.comdirectly from the third party booking website, and the customer will be able to book your room online instantly.

A selection of property management systems (PMS) has been published on our corporate website here. This is not meant to be a definitive list, so please use it as a guide only. A confirmed list of supported PMS providers who are planning to integrate with VisitScotland.com from June 2013 will be published on this page from the end of January with additions made throughout 2013.