Using osCommerce for hotel/apartment reservations

oscommerce hotel apartments reservation system

[narnar3000]

Hi all,

I've been assigned the odious task of finding, installing and running a reservation system for a small company that rents out apartments short-term. There are about 40 apartments in total, with varying sizes and prices.

Needless to say, my budget is very tight and any money I could save would be much appreciated.

I recently came across the osCommerce application and found it would be ideal if I was selling almost anything other than apartment accommodation.

I've searched high and low for a similar/tweaked version of osCommerce that would be suitable for a hotel/apartment reservation system but have so far turned up nothing.

So, my question is, does anyone know of any (free) app (a modified version of osCommerce would be preferable) that can be used as a hotel res system? I need something that would allow the customer to do everything from checking availability straight through to booking.

php-reservation and phpMyHotels both look promising, but neither is currently at release stage - I need something more stable.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul.

[mivox]

osCommerce will track inventory, deduct online purchases from it's inventory records, and number of items available... and I think you can set it to not display 'out of stock' items, so it seems like it would work OK as a reservation system by itself.

What features is it missing for what you need? There are so many contributions for it, you might be able to find an appropriate modification for a reservation system hiding under a different name.

[shady]

Yes, OSCommerce is excellent. The only problem is that it doesn't track "options" of stock and I would guess, to use it as standard, you would effectively need stock control at option (date) level.

It could be tailored to suit, fairly cheaply I would think.

Why not see if there is an OSCommerce expert on their forum, who may be willing to help you with it?

Regards
Shady

[johnroger]

Man, trying to us oscommerce would be a mistake. You certainly need something custom or an off the shelf solution that specializes in your area.

I can think of probably 10 customizations just off the top of my head that an e-commerce system would need and that still wouldn't meet your needs.

[shady]

Hi JohnRoger

True, OSCommerce is not ideal, but is quite tailorable, well written and proven software.

As standard, it is possible to create the hotels, with full descriptions, pictures and "from" prices. Also, to securely complete orders, store customer information, send confirmations etc..

Now for booking! We would need the following enhancements:

Availability table (or possibly amend current options):
Date Ranges
Prices
Qty Available

Now the order processing, where it currently processes options, would need to be amended to process the availability data instead.

This is assuming that the room availability is not shared between multiple vendors of course, in which case this system would be useless!

Yes, it doesn't do the job as standard, but it could be made to do the job well and IMO cheaper than writing from scratch!

[pbreit]

I think you're going to have trouble with OSCommerce. It's really not well-suited to what you are looking for and I actually think you would be quite a bit better looking for a solution that's closer to what you need or going from scratch. Quite frankly, keeping track of 40 units doesn't sound that difficult unless you are renting them hourly!

[narnar3000]

Hi all,

Many thanks for the replies. The 'date' issue is precisely the problem with osCommerce - it seems to keep track of inventory nicely, but that alone isn't enough. I don't just have 40 units and if someone 'buys' 2, I then have 38. I need to be able to check that a certain apartment is available on a certain date.

I'm playing around with the idea of writing what I need from scratch, probably not too hard, as pbreit says, but then again, I'd still like to have a full-functioned, proven, tested system instead. But the idea of tinkering with osCommerce doesn't appeal to me too much either!

Again, if anyone knows of a tweaked osCommerce version or a contribution to it that would suit my needs, I'd be extremely grateful.

Thanks again,

Paul.