Posts made by Alistair Wood

Any update on this as it's really a big issue for us now? We get almost no bookings via our website currently and every week or two Google removes them from our Google my business listings.

Is there anything happening on this in the near future? Would be really good to have HomeAway and TripAdvisor supported for pricing (via RateGenie) and bookings as soon as possible.

@Kwesi-Steele Hi Kwesi is early this year still on track and any chance of a rough idea what the changes and updates might look like? I keep holding off doing my own site via WordPress to see what's coming but we are basically now getting zero bookings via the Tokeet site so I'm going to have to do something soon if it's not fairly imminent.

The problem of guest info coming through from Booking with for example 2 adults when in reality booking was for 2 adults and 2 children is still outstanding. This information should come through correctly, there is another section in the API which appears to have adult and child numbers split out (total can then be calculated) so the correct info is there and available. I sent the API extract to support some time ago so it would be good to have some feedback if this is going to be resolved soon as it causes an ongoing issue with cleaners setting up the apartment. They may see one guest but in reality, it's 1 adult and 3 children for example. From memory, I also can't even work around this myself by manually updating with the correct info in Tokeet as this gets overwritten. (and by that time the wrong info has gone out to the guest in their email confirmation creating further confusion anyway)

In the New Tokeet app in Calendar Mode

1. When I first open it by default the date is in 2017, this should default to today's date. NB 1 seems resolved as of 15th Nov update.
2. After I have set to today's date (in portrait mode which is how it opens) if I then turn the phone to landscape mode so I can see further ahead the date range jumps by a couple of months and I have to set back to Today's date again. It should stay the same as it was before I changed orientation.
3. Phone numbers in the app should be clickable to enable easily calling the guest from within the booking details (it does work from actual guest details area but not on booking details)

This was happening a while back as I was going to be one of the trial users but it all went quiet, not sure what happened but it's definitely something that would be very useful.

@jtbennett Thanks, I'm hoping to avoid having to go down that route but it's going to depend on when the new website functionality comes out and what it can do. One issue is that currently, I embed some javascript onto the standard Tokeet website which gives me an online chat function and potential guests do use it so I don't want to lose it. However, it seems to cause an issue on the refresh of the page (page just comes up blank second time round) So I'm hoping the ability to embed some javascript will work correctly on the new sites as currently supports advice was just to remove it. If you want a sample to test let me know as it would be great if this worked properly on the new version.

@Mark-Hodgkiss What locks are you planning on using with that?

I'm at the point of considering switching to creating my own WordPress site to get round various limitations and issues. Are there any plans for this to be built on WordPress (which makes it much easier to extend and control things myself)

@Brightleap-Apartments Yes that makes sense, would be nice to have that flexibility of multiple Gap Rates

Same on the website and if you are charging VAT they get a nasty shock as price then jumps 20%

We do something along these lines using the Gap Night option in RateGenie and then putting in a positive percentage. For example, a one night rate is the standard rate +30%, plus cleaning fee.

One more thought on this one, length of stay discounts on the websites would also be useful. We have been caught out by undercutting ourselves on longer potential bookings as OTA's like AirBnb offer length of stay discounts and this can mean the prices are lower there than direct.

The Guest Portal would also be good to be able to use but currently, both the guest numbers eg number of adults and children and price paid via OTA's not including cleaning fees are inaccurate in Tokeet so it's not great to give the guest access to a portal where key info is wrong. Ideally, those would also be sorted so we had a usable guest portal.

@Alistair-Wood

Interested to know when the next update to the website functionality might be coming along?

There are a few issues and also a few things that would be very helpful to have

Issues
The main one is initial prices are shown without fees like VAT or cleaning then only when the customer goes to book are these added. 1. I'm not sure this is even legal under EU law and that's why Booking etc now includes all mandatory fees in the pricing. 2. It's not great from a sales perspective as it sets a false expectation especially if you are charging vat as the price is suddenly hiked by 20% as the customer sees it.
Only today I had a customer say, "it says prices from £xyz, when can I book at that price"? The answer is currently never as those are without VAT or cleaning fee, not a great answer to have to give them.

Additional Functionality required

1. The ability to offer coupons for either fixed rates/date and percentage discounts
2. The ability to offer upsell items, early/late check-in, hampers, chocolates etc etc
3. Change the "Book Now" button to say something else as it puts people off as they think they are about to book before even getting actual prices after picking dates