Do you buy, or use a third party booking system?

The big question for many small businesses is, do I need a booking system at all? and can I afford one ayway? In rural areas up to 80% of all businesses are small, 1 or 2 room bed and breakfast, single cottage rental and small country hotels. Even many hotels in rural parts dont have booking systems, so why now should they even bother? they seem to do ok, but often they dont realise they could be doing much better if they just changed a few things about the way they do their online marketing, They are well placed to make use of the internet to level the playing field somewhat. The problem is that many of these businesses have no one to turn to to advise and help them improve their online marketing.

You might wonder what booking systems have to do with online marketing, or how it can generate business. Well, from using them over the last 9 or 10 years I have found that the taking of online bookings to be a great time saver (less emails to answer)and especially useful for taking bookings from foreign bookers who find difficulty with language and telephones. Also when a person is looking at your availability especially when you already have a few bookings showing on the calendars it does seem to spur them into making an on the spot booking, an impulse purchase.

Bespoke booking systems

For small businesses having your own booking system is a relatively cheap option and know this, when you have your booking system built it will fit exactly your business model. and once paid for you can forget having to pay commissions to anyone. payments can be taken in an ever increasing number of ways, payPal,merchant accounts, and so on, but this is a consideration before embarking on a bespoke booking system, bank charges etc. We can help here by advising you what would best suit your business.

Third Party booking systems

Most larger tourism businesses use third party booking systems, in fact many hotels use a number of third party systems in order to fill their many rooms. Larger hotels and so on usually have the flexibility to move around their customers and dont usually tent to suffer the consequences of small business double booking. They use third party systems accepting parts of it might not exactly fit their requirements.

You never own a third party booking system so yo unever stop paying their fees. This is usually acceptable for a larger business knowing that they never need to pay for updates or maintenance charges, and they would definately object strongly to "down time". Tourism Ste Fix have developed a number of medium sized booking systems suitable for all types of tourism businesses. We even have a system for use on web portals and DMO sites where membership is diverse. call us for an informal chat, ask about your requirements or check our portfolio.