This post chronicles my search for a wordpress booking plugin that lets me sell tours and hotel rooms from a wordpress site….
I need the plugin to sell multiple different tours and multiple different hotels with multiple room styles.
I’d like it to calculate the price of the tour or room ( supporting seasonally priced rooms and tours ) and allow one to capture the credit card data and possibly charge the credit card instantly.
People who searched for the following might also find this post helpful: accept hotel room reservations wordpress plugin, use paypal to sell tours, tour operator booking system, wordpress booking system.
Here are some of the solutions I found so far:
CheckFront ( offsite service with WordPress plugin )
http://www.checkfront.com – This one starts at $19 a month and supports paypal/authorize.net payments. The $29 a month plan supports other payment modules.
WebReserv Sidebar Booking Calendar ( offsite service with wordpress integration
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/webreserveu-booking-widget/screenshots/ – still looking at this one.
TourCMS ( offsite service with manual wordpress integration )
http://www.TourCMS.com
-Free for up to 25 transactions per month
-Only works with Tours…. not with hotels or rooms.
Example tour: http://www.peaceofangkor.com/ifr-classic-angkor-tour.html
The sell tours… but they don’t have the live booking for hotel.
Online Booking Calendar ( WordPress Plugin )
http://onlinebookingcalendar.com – This one appears to be having problems. It might be of use to some but it appears very rough on the edges. The big problem I spotted right away was that all of the demos requested a "Arrival Time" and "Departure Time" and also did not seem to support any pricing options.
Conclusion
No conclusion yet… more research to do.
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27 users responded in this post
Hi Wes,
Thanks a lot for taking a look at TourCMS, I just wanted to clarify a couple of points.
1) We do have a WordPress plugin available. The TourCMS plugin extends WordPress with new post types for Tours/Hotels, links to TourCMS for availability checking / booking and pulls back live information from your TourCMS account into WordPress Meta Data for use in Widgets / Themes or the included Shortcodes. Full details here:
http://www.tourcms.com/support/webdesign/wordpres…
(or if the link doesn't work, search "WordPress" on our Website)
Of course manual integration is still possible and is as simple as adding a link to the booking engine.
2) TourCMS does indeed support Hotels (individual room, multi room, whole property – i.e chalet bookings)
http://www.tourcms.com/support/setup/hotel.php
(or if the link doesn't work, search "Hotel Reservation" on our Website)
3) The 25 booking limit for free accounts is total, not per month. Paid accounts start at just $26.
If we can help at all please do feel free to contact us.
Easy, fast- i like this. 1 minutes, install and use, booking online, manager room system dailywp.com/demo/hotelpress/
Hi Wes,
I was wondering if you reached a conclusion on which booking plugin to use. I'm also considering WP custom post types for this – what are your thoughts on that?
Thanks,
Calle
I ended up going the low tech route and using a form.
Bummer!!! I ma looking for the solution to sell tours and it looks like there is none available.
Well its been 29 weeks…have you found a solution? I am also looking for one.
Hi Jose,
If you you are a tour/activity operator then you may want to take a look at:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rezgo-online-…
Rezgo is only for tours and activities (ie. fixed scheduled start / daily recurring tours) and does not support hotels or accommodations. Like TourCMS and Checkfront, it is a SaaS with a WordPress plugin.
Cheers,
Stephen
Sadly, as it stands, there are absolutely no usable WordPress booking plugins and, believe me, a lot of us have been searching for years for a real one (and, no, "wrapper" plugin such as CheckFront or TourCMS, which are sold as limited services, don't count).
There is, however, a glimmer of hope: the guys at Rocket Genius, makers of the excellent Gravity Forms plugin, revealed on their forum that they will soon be working on a proper booking plugin:
http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/bookings-…
… if this is something you want to see happen, be sure to drop by that thread and make them aware of your interest. The more people who contribute to that discussion, the more they will be encouraged to create the wonderful WordPress solution that we all know is possible.
(Disclaimer: I am the CTO of Checkfront)
The idea of a native WordPress booking engine is nice, in theory. But frankly, WordPress was never designed to store consumer data. It's simply not secure enough. If basic calendar / reservations form all you need, then fine, but anything more advanced in regards to payment processing, financial reporting, analytics etc should be segregated from /any/ blogging software. As much as I love WordPress, you'd be crazy to store that sort of data in it.
Wrapper and remotely hosted plugins such as Checkfront, Rezgo and TourCMS although perhaps less flexible on the front-end, provide a suite of features that would be very difficult to squeeze into WordPress. More importantly, they are designed with e-commerce in mind, and have safe guards that go way beyond WordPress in regards to data protection.
Given a decent API (as most of them have), you can build out whatever front-end you like, and take advantage of the back-office features they provide.
Hello there!
if that was the matter i don't think they would build e-commerce plugins at all. Despite the fact that we can find a lot of e-commerce solutions for wordpress (payments or consumer data included), a nice booking system plugin would be grate!!! Of course you should promote your api's as a CTO but don't mislead people that don't know a lot about that staff. The mySQL db which wordpress use, is more than ok to save sensitive data. You are right wordpress never designed as a complex cms or portal or booking system or e-store or or or … but that's why the plugins and the themes exist. To extent it !!!
Hi!
I'd like to recommend http://www.sirvoy.com. We also offer a wp plugin, read more here http://www.sirvoy.com/support/en/?p=34
Yeah right, php based wordpress can be extremely secure and very safe and reliable. You most definitely don't need to pay a 3rd party if you can find the right free plugin.
I have found the best solution is to write your own custom plugin.
I have developed a tour booking script (and a car reservations booking script) that's working great. It wasn't that expensive to do (I hired a programmer to help) and my client prefers to "own" the script rather than pay a % of each transaction.
If anyone wants further info, let me know!
Have a look at Zingiri Bookings. New kid on the block but already very popular: http://www.zingiri.com/bookings
Available for WordPress as well as any other type of website.
Any news about a solid wp reservation plugin? I keep finding, but it seems like noone is doing it at an acceptable level of quality.
Hi guys, did anyone hear about the WP-OBS? i came across it but wasn't sure if i should buy it. Seems to look the part, but i was wondering if anyone has already done it? if so, can you share some information. it looks as if it has just came out a few weeks ago. the link: http://wp-online-booking-system.com
Thanks.
Tim
please let me know about the plugin. A friend of min is wanting one for his bus transportation company.
I'd like to recommend http://www.wphotelbooking.com
Regards!!
i need plugin wordpress for hotel listing like agoda, anebody can help me??
I'd recommend easyreservations.org
About 119€.
We have recently updated our hotel booking plugin for WordPress, so that it now also includes a hotel booking widget for the sidebar. More information is available here: http://sirvoy.com/accept-bookings-online-with-our…
/John, Sirvoy Ltd
Hi h_gal, i also interested in easyreservations.org.
Have you give it a try ? It's one time payment right ?
Any review would be please.
Thanks..
Guys,
I have finally found a well priced feature rich solution to fill this clear market gap. http://easyreservations.org/
At a once off cost of 119 € I think it is reasonably priced. The developer is young, passionate and prompt with support. The customisation options are amazing and I can see how it can easily be used for large hotels, single property rentals ( or just a couple of properties), tours, appointments and a lot more.
By all means, don’t take my word for it!
Download the free version and take it for a test drive, and also go and take a look at a site I am currently working on that is using this plugin (not live yet but working exactly as expected).
http://manfield.ssddev.net/bookings/house/ (please don’t spam me with a heap of unpaid bookings)
- Josh
I wrote a plugin of myself for multihotel bookings (but does not support tours). You can read more here http://wp-easybooking.com/content/16-what-it-is.
I provide a free version wich might be enough here http://wp-easybooking.com/9-easybooking-plugin-fr… .
I would love to see how it works. Thanks.
wow thanks Panos, after reading through all of these comments looking for a genuinely free booking plugin that has paypal support it's a relief to see your comment. Can I ask though why your plugin isn't on the WordPress plugin directory?
I've done quite a bit of testing over the last few weeks on various booking / reservation plugins for wordpress. Thanks to one of the above posts I came accross: http://easyreservations.org/
You can demo the system here: http://demo.easyreservations.org/s
Its feature rich and very very versitile…. I'm a few questions away from signing up for the premium version.
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