Forum Moderators: rogerd
Can anyone recommend any good forums for travel site owners?
Martin
Can you specify what you mean by direct hotel reservations? Are you going to make direct contracts with hotels and run your own reservations system? Or are you going to link to an affiliate program that pays you commissions? We do both on our sites.
Lots of options available for weather, some free, some paid. Sticky mail me for more info.
W.
Direct booking - Do you mean taking reservations for your own properties via your website? If so, you have several ways to go including; purchase a software package, or sign up for a monthly fee to run on someone else's system, or build your own custom setup. We have tried all three and are happiest with the ones we created ourselves.
At present my site is linked to affiliate hotel booking programs but I´d like to look into dealing directly with hotels and set up my own personalised reservations systems. Any feedback from people who have done this would be much appreciated.
Regarding weather, I´ve found it difficult to find weather report providers that cover Portugal. Any links to such providers would be great.
I´d like to be able to intergrate the design of the weather reports to fit in with my site. What sort of prices would I be likely to pay for such a set up?
Many thanks
Martin
For the reservations syetm, it's not just the technical side, but also the business side. With direct contracts, you now have to interface with many people at each hotel:
1) busness department for contracts
2) revenue managemant department for room rates (and update rates- hotels often change their rates several times a year)
3) front desk or reservations department for reservation confirmations
4) accounting department for payments
Some hotels may have the same person doing several of the functions. But hotels also have very high turnover rates, especially for #1 & #2, so make sure you keep copies of ALL correspondence/contracts- don't rely on the hotels to have copies of all your rate agreements.
