Allow to start the booking process with room type or package
I design websites for hotel and am working on the first site where Mews needs to be integrated. It surprised me to see that it is not possible to link to a specific room or package in the booking engine.
Every hotel website I worked with wants a page on their where they describe and promote their room types and packages. It makes perfectly sense to add a [Book now] button to that description, which raises the expectation that you can directly book that room type or package with a click on that button.
Unfortunately this is not possible with Mews. The booking engine can only start with the first step where you enter the stay dates. Even if you use a deeplink with a preselected room type, the booker needs to go back to the first step to enter their stay dates after which the preselected room type gets lost.
We would like to see the following booking flows:
Booking flow for a specific room type / category
1. Guest reads room type descriptions and decides to book a 'Suite'
2. Guest clicks the [Book this room] button.
3. Booking engine opens with that room type preselected.
4. Guest enteres number of persons and their stay dates on the same page. The date picker should show the available dates with their restrictions for the selected room type, and if not available, it should indicate if other rooms are available).
5. Booking engine shows the rates that are available rates for that room type and below that, the other available room types.
6. Guest selects a rate and completes the booking.
Booking flow for a specific package / rate
1. Guest reads package descriptions on our website and decides to book the 'Weekend package'
2. Guest clicks the [Book this package] button.
3. Booking engine opens with that package preselected.
4. Guest enteres number of persons and their stay dates on the same page. The date picker should show the available dates with their restrictions for that package.
5. Booking engine shows available room types with their rates for that package for those dates.
6. Guest selects a room type and completes the booking.
I know you can create your own booking form and use the API to pass stay dates, persons and room type (not rate/package ?) to be used by the booking engines, but if the room type is not available at those dates, we're back at the original problem where the guest needs to go back to step one to change their stay date, where the preselected room type / package gets lost.
I have integrated the booking engines of Cubilis, Hoteliers, SiteMinder and Smarthotel on other websites and they follow the prefered flow I described above.
Related request:
https://feedback.mews.com/forums/955601-mews-booking-engine/suggestions/40921093-calendar-view-show-the-available-bookable-dates-p
Horeca Webservice
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