Probably the single most important element of your website is your online bookings.   Many savvy innkeepers users include the RezOvation Booking Engine on their site to ensure that they don't lose out on potential guests.

However, if your potential guests have a hard time finding the link to your online bookings, you might be missing some important clicks.  To help you better catch those all-important clicks, we've put together a button pack with a number of different shapes, sizes, and colors.  Click here to get your buttons now.

The RezOvation Booking Engine servers for RezOvation Desktop will be undergoing scheduled maintenance Tuesday, 10/26, and will be unavailable between 12a-3a CST. 

BedandBreakfast.com, the leading specialty travel website focused on inns and B&Bs, on Friday announced that it is offering an extended line of products and services to help innkeepers better market and monetize their websites, including trip insurance, reservations for local attractions, and increased consumer reviews.

B&Bs using either the RezOvation or Webervations booking engines will soon be able to offer potential guests additional products and services in the checkout path, providing innkeepers with both additional revenue streams and increased reservations. These new optional products/features include trip insurance sold through Access America and add-ons like event tickets and local sightseeing tours, purchased right on inns’ online reservation checkout pages. Properties will also be able to embed BedandBreakfast.com reviews in their check-out path, providing positive reinforcement to prospective guests at a key decision point in the reservation process. RezOvation and Webervations customers can also allow their guests to receive a BedandBreakfast.com review reminder after they have stayed at a property, minimizing the need for innkeepers to solicit reviews directly. Each property will have the option of using any or all of the additional features on its booking engine.

“Our goal is to enable B&Bs to offer the same kind of rich website features as larger properties,” explained Eric Goldreyer, CEO of BedandBreakfast.com. “Until now, smaller properties couldn’t offer trip insurance, generally considered a win-win for travelers and properties alike. In addition, consumers are increasingly demanding to see property reviews, and these new products will help innkeepers both increase the number of reviews they have, and display those reviews to prospective guests.”

None of the additional features require any website changes or work on the part of the innkeepers, except to let BedandBreakfast.com know which features they wish to use. Each feature will be rolled out over the coming months, starting with travel add-ons and the review products;innkeepers will be notified directly in advance of each new feature launch, including details on how to customize, add, or drop the services for their property.   

Trip insurance will be sold through an agreement between BedandBreakfast.com and Access America. Consumers booking on a RezOvation or Webervations property website will see a check-box on the final page of the checkout and will be able to choose whether or not they want to purchase insurance. If they decide to take the insurance – which will protect them against such problems as trip delays, illness, and lost luggage – their information will be shared with Access America which issues the insurance policy. Properties will earn revenue on every sale made from their websites and can discontinue the program at any time; all billing and revenue sharing is done automatically. In addition, when travelers are offered trip insurance, it’s easier for innkeepers to implement their cancellation policies; after all, the prospective guests had the option to protect themselves with low-cost insurance.

Travel add-ons will be sold through an agreement between BedandBreakfast.com and Viator, a leading online resource for travel experiences, providing access to 5,500 tours, attractions, and activities in 450 destinations in 75 countries. This feature will be limited to U.S. properties in areas where Viator has coverage. Consumers who book via a RezOvation or Webervations booking engine will see a link to Viator on the reservation confirmation page; they can click through to a Viator web page with add-on activities relevant to their destination, and can purchase any of interest. As with trip insurance, properties will earn revenue on every sale, and the billing and revenue sharing will be done automatically.  

The BedandBreakfast.com reviews widget can be displayed in the checkout path to help increase the conversion. The technique of putting third-party reviews into the checkout pages has shown tremendous conversion increases in the retail sector, and is expected to lead to more reservations by consumers wary of staying at lesser-known properties. It will also help generate more consumer reviews for participating properties. The monthly income from just a few travel add-on or trip insurance sales can cover the monthly cost of a booking engine; just one review a month on BedandBreakfast.com earns a property up to $60 annually in membership credits. The reviews can be shown in a separate window when someone checks availability on a property website or as a customized graphic embedded into the room results pages.

BedandBreakfast.com began offering the same embedded review widget in January 2009. More than 600 properties have already added the review widget to their own website, and those properties are generating four times as many reviews on BedandBreakfast.com as properties that do not use the review widget.

One of the most successful techniques for properties to get more consumer reviews is a follow-up email sent to a guest several days after check-out. While this is a very effective tool, many innkeepers are reluctant to solicit reviews, and guests may question whether their information will truly be kept private if an email comes directly from a property. RezOvation and Webervations users will soon be able to give consumers the option of having BedandBreakfast.com send a reminder email to their guests after check-out. This will help innkeepers who want to avoid soliciting reviews themselves and will convey to guests that they are working with a well-respected third party to generate their reviews. Properties using the feature can expect to increase the number of reviews as well as their review credits with no additional effort.

“Travelers will now start to see professional features on small property websites, and they will be more comfortable than ever booking a B&B when they see reviews from the leader in specialty lodging,” commented John Banczak, Chief Operating Officer for BedandBreakfast.com. “We are happy to be able to offer these products to help enable small lodgings attract broader audiences.  The products and services available at B&Bs around the world are better than they have ever been; our goal is to help consumers realize what a wonderful travel experience awaits when they stay at B&Bs.”

About BedandBreakfast.com

Founded in 1994, BedandBreakfast.com is the leading specialty travel website, with detailed information on over 7,500 B&Bs worldwide. Travelers can research information including over 50,000 photos, read over 70,000 unbiased consumer reviews, and make confirmed reservations instantly at nearly 1,700 properties. Welcome at more than 4,000 B&Bs, BedandBreakfast.com Gift Cards never expire; they have no restrictions or blackout dates, and are available online or at over 20,000 retail locations.

About RezOvation

RezOvation is a Microsoft Gold-certified company and the industry leader in property management systems, online reservations, website design and internet marketing for the small hotel, inn, and B&B market. Over 7,500 properties actively use RezOvation and Webervations software. RezOvation is part of the BedandBreakfast.com family of companies. RezOvation's suite of products is ideal for bed and breakfasts, inns, boutique hotels, lodges, and many other types of businesses.

We're excited to announce that we have just completed the acquisition of Webervations, the leading online availability calendar and website booking company, previously owned and operated by American Dreams, Inc. We will continue to operate Webervations at its existing offices in Logan, OH, along with most of its current staff; Webervations customers will not be affected by the transition. John Banczak, Chief Operating Officer of RezOvation, will oversee the daily operation of the business, and David Swain, founder and creator of the highly-acclaimed Webervations product will continue to be involved with the operation of the business through the end of 2010.

Plans for the 2009 enhancements of Webervations include:

• Completing the development of Webervations 2.0 with advanced features, (launched earlier in 2008 and originally called the 'new Webervations,') so that all customers who wish to use it will have access to this system.
• Further developing the website booking product for associations, directories, and chamber of commerce/CVB sites to include complete customization and a streamlined booking process.
• Incorporating an advanced data security and encryption package into both the original Webervations product (now called Webervations 1.0) as well as into Webervations 2.0.
• Waiving the annual $99 BedandBreakfast.com availability calendar link fee for Webervations customers (also waived for RezOvation Booking Engine customers).
• Waiving all Webervations 1.0 fees for all existing or RezOvation customers using annual support and/or booking engine products.

RezOvation will launch other initiatives with the Webervations system after extensive innkeeper and association feedback. RezOvation will conduct a comprehensive survey of Webervations customers in the next few months, and will form a customer advisory panel in early 2009 to help guide the future development of the product.

For more information, please read our press release.

RezOvation has a GDS connection – that stands for Global Distribution System – and more specifically for a connection that puts a property into one of four systems that provide booking capabilities to both online travel websites and offline travel agents.  These four companies are Worldspan, Sabre, Galileo, and Apollo.  We provide this service to quite a few of our customers that use our “Desktop” (not “GT”) product.  So it may seem like a shock to hear me talk about the “myth” of GDS distribution.  GDS can be a great service for some properties, but some properties may not need it.  For as many years as I’ve been involved in online travel, small properties have been bombarded with messaging about why they need to be in the GDS.  Yet often times after great time and expense, they find themselves in these systems and they see little to no revenue coming from it.  I want to share a story about this that will help explain why.  This is all based on some happenings at the PAII conference in April of this year when I had a conversation with the owner of a competitive PMS product who just so happened to be right next to our booth, and who gave out a little misinformation about our product.

First – lets get some of the facts straight.  We have a connection to the GDS systems for our Desktop product, and we also have a connection directly to BedandBreakfast.com, Expedia, hotels.com, Kayak, Sidestep, and a number of other small sites for our GT product.  Our direct connection is to all of these sites “preferred” lodging programs, and we have contracts with every one of these sites that guarantees our properties are placed onto their pages.  We have almost 1500 properties live, with photos, bookable, and who are taking reservations on these sites with placement that rivals the larger hotels.  I am happy to show anyone the multitude of them.  My discussion was with Jeff at Booking Center about their GDS connection and the benefits it provided that he was conveying to a customer.  Like a few other PMS companies, Booking Center promotes to properties that if they use their software and GDS connection, they will likely be featured live on major travel websites like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia, usually at a lower cost than if they worked through a direct connection like the one RezOvation provides.  Knowing that this is usually not the case, and that major travel websites often no longer display properties that come through this GDS-style connection, I asked Jeff to show me at least one property that they had in the U.S. that was actually on either Travelocity, Expedia or Orbitz and getting bookings.

After some thinking, Jeff came up with the Bodega Harbor Inn, Bodega Bay, CA.  This was the only one, and on Travelocity only through the Booking Center GDS connection.  Perhaps there are more, but this was the only one he showed us.  It could be viewed on Travelocity, but not Expedia or Orbitz.  On Travelocity, the display was typical of GDS properties - it had no photo, and Travelocity did not even check its availability.  It turns out that Travelocity in this location only checks availability for its direct contract properties – (like the type RezOvation feeds to Expedia for instance) not properties that are loaded through a GDS connection in this way like the Bodega Harbor Inn.  So it does not show up like other properties do.  In order to check it for availability, a consumer needs to do a second availability check.  We did this - and the property did not show available for any date that we checked.  This was in early April, and I repeated this same process in early May to verify.  Yet, on the properties own website for the same exact dates, they were showing full availability.  So the actual property that Booking Center used as an example to demonstrate their GDS connection on major travel websites flat-out didn't work.  You can see the screen shots of the availability pages here as well.

This is the myth of GDS distribution that exists out there - that magically as a property if you pay a PMS provider for this service, you wind up on these major websites.  If you are considering a GDS connection for the purpose of getting on major travel websites, ask the company selling you on it to show you a number of properties that are live, with photos, and taking bookings on sites like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz.  If they cannot show you any – then I would not assume you will be the first success they’ve had, considering that companies like Booking Center or RezStream have been advertising these links for years now.  Ask them to see a few properties that are live, check the properties website to verify they truly are a customer of the PMS company, and better yet – if you do actually see the property on one of these websites, call them to verify they are getting actual revenue from the website, and at what cost. 

The truth is that in order to get on these websites through the GDS, you need to pay your GDS upfront fees (which can easily be $500-$1000 upfront, plus another $500/yr), plus your GDS transaction fees (which are anywhere from $10-15% per transaction) - PLUS pay to be in the merchant reservation program for another 25-30%, and your GDS fees on top of that.  Your cost per transaction including all of the upfront and maintenance costs to be in their merchant programs through the GDS are usually 35-45% of a reservation. You also need to sign separate agreements with each distribution website if you want to be in their preferred programs.  And there is no guarantee you will get any revenue after absorbing the upfront costs depending on your volume.

A GDS connection can certainly have some real benefits, so I am not writing this to discount the value – we do promote them in a lot of instances.  For starters, traditional offline travel agents still use them quite often.  If you want to reach these people, then the GDS can be very valuable (even though many agents are starting to book online or use tools provided by online companies like Expedia Corporate for instance).  We’ve head from properties that do a lot of corporate business that the GDS is invaluable.  If you are in a heavy corporate area, it may be for you.  In addition, you might be able to get onto major websites through them at a lower cost – but we haven’t seen a great success rate. Ultimately the major travel websites are pursuing direct links and they are trying to only sell properties that participate in their “merchant model” programs.  RezOvation and BedandBreakfast.com are the only two companies that have these types of connections and contracts to date, and we are happy to show you examples from coast-to-coast of successful properties benefiting from tens of thousands of dollars of additional revenue from these programs.  Sorry Booking Center – we don’t mean to take shots – but it is time we start getting the truth about these systems out in front of customers. If you have any additional GDS questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at John@RezOvation.com.

Bodega Harbor Inn on Travelocity.pdf (78.69 kb)

Bodega Harbor Inn on Travelocity - Shows No Availability.pdf (21.62 kb)

Bodega Harbor Inn - Their own Website Showing Availability.pdf (18.73 kb)

Did you know that the RezOvation Booking integrates with the Google Analytics web tracking system?  If you have a website, and you are not tracking your website traffic, then Google Analytics is by far the best tool available.  If you are already tracking website traffic with a different system, then you can easily add Google Analytics on top of your existing tracking.

Our Booking Engine system, available for both RezOvation GT and RezOvation Desktop, features a link to Google Analytics which allows you to track your actual conversion rates and reservation amounts back to the original referral source.  This is an incredibly powerful tool that is very easy to set up and will instantly allow you better understand where your guests are finding out about you, and better leverage your marketing dollars.  

For more information about Google Analytics, go here.

To learn how RezOvation Booking Engine integrates to Google Analytics, please visit our FAQ.