Not sure if you and your readers have taken a look at the tutorial that the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse put together for on-line booking engines. Our tour and activity booking software, Rezgo.com, and number of others are listed in the tutorial along with comparisons. It’s really well put together. You can find it on the ATDW site at:

http://www.atdw.com.au/tourism_e_kit.asp

To clarify –

Availability’s ResBook is NZ’s oldest and largest booking engine.

Resbook handles accommodations, activities and rental cars.

The pricing model is a monthly or annual fee because there is no free system (always read the fine print).

There are many considerations when choosing a booking engine (1)user friendly for both tourism supplier and potential guest (2) costs (3) distribution/integration options (4) agent portal optioin (5) functionality.

Funny to think that just 8 years ago Availability was launched as the first online booking engine and look at the players in the market now!

Fun and exciting time.

Cheers
Gina

What is missing is a handy dandy chart which lists the various businesses offering these systems and in brief, the features, benefits and base costs for each.
PS Andrew – reckon your system may be very good, but wow your explanation on the blog was mind-numbing. For us out in accommodation-land, less is better. Thanks Michelle for making a start on the things to weigh up.

I would recommend anyone looking at an online booking system to look at the big picture before making a decision. Look at the total cost of sale for an online booking through your own site over the year not just this month or this week. A good system will give flexibility in price and function to cater for big and small operators. The commission based systems are fantastic for new properties getting started and your average small operator. Having little or no set up costs with virtually free training is a win win. For some medium to large operators I am not so sure.

Some questions to think about some of Michelle has mentioned as well…
Does the system provide the option of request and or instant availability?
Is it easy to use? does it charge a guests credit card through my website? Does it link to my preferred sales channels and Property management system?
Do they charge monthly fees or commission on every booking?
Can I get flexibility with my booking system to interact with my customer the way I want?
What are their plans for improvements?
What support do I get and where is it based?

Links to sales channels and Property management systems has become a requirement now for an operators own website booking system. Having this function is reducing the risks of double bookings and improving access to inventory for sales channels. If only they could get more price parity they would be happy indeed!
These types of links is I think slowly encouraging operators to have price parity across all their online sales channels which is a good thing. However it is easy for us to say price parity is key but giving operators choices like this with their booking system is important.

Would be interested to know a little more about Andrews prices for Tourism Exchange compared to Daniel’s!

User pays is great when you are not getting bookings, a fee based structure has a good argument here too. If they stop working for a customer whether they are getting bookings or not then that customer will potentially look elsewhere.

Perhaps someone should organize a live debate for these types of providers to state their case and for their potential customers to put them on the spot!

Ditto from me, Great blog!

Yes, we are currently developing our channel management system. I expect to see the first version of it made available within the next 6 weeks.

Great blog!

We are a new Saas based booking system. We’d love to have your feedback. More information is available here:

http://www.checkfront.co.nz

Thanks!
-Jason

In terms of real time availability I’m the first one to advocate operators should try to be 100% real time with their online bookings and to use a front desk system that helps them to achieve that without messy allocations.
But in reality there are far too many small B&Bs, lodges etc that don’t want/need the pricier reservation/front desk systems and so there needs to be a middle ground to cater for this grey area – it’s not all black/white.
Their choice of real time online booking system therefore should be flexible enough to adjust dates to “on request” where needed – as a traveller I prefer instant booking confirmations provided I can trust that I’m not getting overbooked, so if I have to request a booking sometimes to get a definite response then so be it – as long as it’s all clear upfront when the booking is being made.

The Tourism Exchange does offer a property management system that caters for both accommodation and activity providers.

eviivo frontdesk is an easy-to-use, inexpensive property management and reservation system that is also an online booking system. frontdesk has been created specifically to meet the needs and resources of independent serviced and non-serviced accommodation businesses, as well as tours and attractions. It enables tourism owners and operators to sell their rooms/products online by connecting them to leading travel and leisure websites in addition to enabling their own web sites.

With frontdesk the manual updating of multiple sales and distribution channels is a thing of the past! By updating the frontdesk diary, all distribution channels are automatically updated with real-time, last-room availability – saving you time and hassle!

This product is best suited for properties up to 30 rooms/products and is primarily charged on a success fee basis with no minimum term.

There are plenty of companies offering software for a fixed annual or monthly fee. Prospective buyers should ask themselves “how do I benefit?” There is no guarantee you will get any online bookings processed through the software once you have paid for it. The company that has sold you the software has no real incentive to ensure you get online bookings as they already have your money!

The success fee model is designed as a simple user-pay model. If you are not delivered online bookings, neither party makes any money. Ask yourself the question: “Which company is going to work the hardest to make sure you get the most online bookings?”.

Real-time availability – a true picture. It is important to remember that if you provide a booking link to a 3rd party website, chances are you may only be making an allocation of a sub-set of your stock to the third party. This means that the third party website is unlikely to feature an accurate picture of your true availability. This can be misleading and confusing to customers. eviivo frontdesk is designed to provide your customers with a real-time view of all your available inventory and not just a sub-set of allocated inventory. Allocations also raise the potential for double bookings, which we all want to avoid.

The online booking system game is currently very competitive and customers need to look consider all the options when making this critical business decision.

One in particular offers accommodation and activity as part of the product mix. Am I correct in thinking that Tourism Exchange is the only one that offers accommodation and activity booking capability?