Development news – new features and improvements
Development news
Since the original release of the Owner Holidays website in early September 2016, we have been busy in development doing lots of improvements and enhancements.
Multi currency
It is now possible for the owner to define prices in the currency they prefer, and for enquirers to see prices in the currency they prefer. For owners, the currency can be set on the pricing module of the property edit screen. For enquirers, the currency can be changed at the bottom left of the screen.
Integrations
It is now possible to have a link to the owner’s website, and also a link to the individual websites or pages for each property. The individual property link is defined in the integrations tab of the property edit screen.
Flexible pricing
For each property you can define:
- weekly rate
- cleaning fee per holiday
- city taxes per night
- minimum length of stay
- extra price per guest above a given number of guests
- which days are weekends?
- weekend night rate
- multiple week discount
- returnable security deposit
- for each of 1-6 nights define the rate as a percentage of weekly rate or night rate or break rate
- for each of 1-4 nights define a weekend nightly rate
- allow ability to write general notes on pricing
Then, for each special price period:
- start and end date of special pricing
- weekly rate
- if night rate or break rate defined above, night or break prices for each of 1-6 days, and for weekends
- otherwise day and break rates use percentages of weekly rate
- changeover days
- minimum stay for mid-week and weekend breaks
The simplest approach is to define the default percentages, and then for each price period you only have to define the weekly rate, and the individual break rates will be taken as a percentage of the weekly rate.
Slide carousel
Minor changes were made to this to be a better fit to the usual 4×3 or 3×2 aspect ratio photos
Availability calendar
This now goes 2 years into the future
Minor improvements
Various improvements on individual fields. There are now checks on
- length of text files
- format of URL fields
- format of numeric fields
- ranges on numeric fields
Everything is developing well. However, I am a little confused with the period rates.
When I set up the weekly rate, minimum stay, weekend night rate and start days the results on the calendar are confusing. They show the weekly rate for each mid-week night and the weekend night rate for weekend nights.
I have a weekday night rate which is less than the weekend night rate. Do I fill in the night 1 rate as the weekday night rate? Which days of the week do the 1 to 6 nights refer to?
Yes, there may be a few more tweaks necessary, or a better use of defaults. it is not easy to cover every scenario, and even more difficult to cover every different booking management system. I think the best thing is for me to write a short article giving some examples how to use the pricing model. It may be useful to have a simple and an advanced option – many people want just a very simple system.
As always, the obvious is not obvious. The 1 – 6 nights refers to the length of stay, not the days of the week. I will make it clearer on the screen.
Ah ha, clear now.
I cannot update availability beyond July 2017 ???
Sorry, slight glitch, I should have tested more. It will be in the next version (maybe tomorrow). I am doing a few changes to allow weekend short breaks to be priced, and also have separate midweek and weekend minimum length breaks.
How do I advertise and the cost, thanks
Just register and enter your properties. It is currently free for the first year.
I had blocked out some days on my calendar as i was not sure if I wanted them open for letting. Now I want to release them but I cannot find out how to delete a booked period (or part of a booked period)?
Good idea. It is possible to delete all availability, but that is a bit drastic. I will implement something to allow you to delete specific periods in the next day or two – probably tomorrow.
Any blocking done by the owner in the availability screen is treated as a booking. You can delete these by going to the left hand menu and selecting ‘My Booking Requests’. Then delete the period you want.
Any imported bookings from iCals integration are treated differently, and in that case all imported dates are deleted, in the link on the calendar page.
I can access ‘All in one’ to set weekly rates for specific weeks but what I want to do is the following and I can’t work out how to go about it:
for each of 1-6 nights define the rate as a percentage of weekly rate or night rate or break rate
for each of 1-4 nights define a weekend nightly rate
How do I do this?
i don;t think this is possible. You either have to do everything as percentages, or everything as day/break prices. Maybe you should define everything as a night rate?