| Overview
The EBS calendar system has been designed to complement
a paper based approach to recording bookings and can manage
your non internet sourced bookings using our unique
SMS text messaging system. So you don't always have to be online,
even when your customers are! If you are out and about, it notifies
you when someone has reserved or booked online by sending a brief
text message summary of the facility chosen and dates booked! It
caters for your offline administrative requirements, and for the
booking needs of your online customers. They will find the calendar
completely intuitive and easy to use, and will soon be commenting
on your novel approach to making it easier for customers to reserve
dates online. Your customers can reserve a desired date immediately
without having to make a phone call. They will receive a professional
looking email summarising the features, dates and cost of their
provisionally held booking. You are then able to confirm the booking
on-line. This time when you ring your customers back (now at your
convenience) you won't have to spend time discussing available dates,
but can focus on their other requirements.
It also contains a number of features to aid you in your day to
day administration work. Time saved is money saved, and time that
you can put back into doing other things.
Click here to
view a more complete list of features. Click here
to view the long break calendar. To view the short/long break calendar click here.
Why use EBS?
Maximise your site visits to bookings ratio
Many visitors viewing your web site would like to secure the dates
they want while they are looking your web pages. While it is true
that some visitors simply pick up the phone and ring you to do this,
many don't. If it is inconvenient to phone you they will often email
you about the specific property and dates that they require, or
visit somewhere where they know they can book online. Those that
email are usually looking for specific dates and will ensure that
they get a suitable booking by emailing other property owners too.
This can result in you having to make a fruitless return phone call.
It also means that a potential customer, who liked your property,
and wanted to book it, has been lost. With a real time booking calendar,
showing real time availability, this is no longer a problem. And
because the calendar is so flexible, you can also enter in bookings
that you take over the phone, or from other sources.
Increase your referral rates
With such a unique, easy to use and visually appealing
booking calendar, your booking process will stand out from
the crowd. An email confirmation is sent with each booking.
This email contains not only the details of the booking made, but
also a link to your booking calendar. As your online booking process
will now contrast so favourably with the competition, this email/link
will be forwarded to others. This will increase your referral rates!
Reduce or eliminate agency fees by making better use of
your own web site
If you are reviewing your current agency arrangements in order to
reduce costs, but are concerned about losing customers who book
online, then EBS could be one approach to making this transition.
Simply replace the agency arrangement with our booking calendar,
plugged into your website by a simple web link, and use a non-agency
advertising portal to generate traffic to your site. What's more,
to give you confidence that this approach will work, you can remove
a block of dates from your agency and plug them into your booking
calandar. Increasing the number of dates available through your
booking calendar will eventually prove that all you need is some
web advertising and your own web site!
Keeping it personal - online
Many customers would like the facility to secure their dates online.
Cottage owners may have thought briefly about offering online booking
services to keep up with the times, but value the personal relationships
with their visitors. A traditional booking system cannot satisfy
both groups! The EBS system differs in its approach to how the booking
is taken. The customer visits your web site and decides to book
using your new booking calendar. They know that the dates required
are available and reserve them, receiving a polite confirmation
email immediately, summarising their reservation and informing them
that you will ring them shortly. You ring them back to make the
reservation confirmed, and to have the usual chat with your customer.
Now both groups are satisfied. If a customer still prefers to book
by phone then this is also catered for.[see section below]
Make more effective use of your Advertising Spend
When a potential customer visits your web site, and a few others,
what makes yours stand out from the crowd? Because of your advertising
spend you have effectively already paid for them to visit your web
site! Why not show them that you have given serious consideration
to your online customers' needs? An impressive booking/reservation
process will go a long way towards ensuring that other potential
customers will be referred to your site, especially when the calendar
includes:
1) Booking
Confirmation Emails
These emails summarise to the customer the property booked, the
dates taken and the price. A link to your web site is automatically
included so that this can be forwarded on by your impressed customers
to others.
2) Email
Payment Links
Customers can also receive a payment summary of their booking incorporating
the professional looking logos of PayPal
and NOCHEX
online payment settlement companies. If you have a Paypal or Nochex
account your customers will be able to pay you from this email.
The price, deposit or full amount is automatically calculated from
what you control in the booking calendar. Again, this is so different
from what normally happens that the email is likely to be forwarded
to friends, family, and colleagues - further promoting your business.
Simply put all we are doing is helping you to apply the very traditional
principles of the strength of referral and repeat business, to your
online customers!
Safeguard future rental income
Over recent years many people have been attracted to the self-catering
market by low interest rates and a desire to own a business to generate
a second income. This has led to a sharp increase in the number
of properties being offered to let. Many of these businesses promote
their properties through internet advertising (agency arrangement
or otherwise). This approach relies on how well the advertising
is promoted through search engines such as Google. To do well for
your business the internet advertising firm must consistently achieve
decent search engine rankings for its site and for your web site.
However, with so many similar properties competing for the same
market space this is becoming more and more difficult, and costly.
In short, we cannot all be ranked number one on Google!
All self-catering property owners will know that the strength of
their business lies in repeat business and referrals. Here at FCS-Solutions
we have developed a clean looking and extremely simple to use booking
calendar that utilises these strengths to give your business a boost
whilst making it stand out from the crowd. And what's more, if you
don't wish to use an agency to achieve occupancy, you can now do
this and still have a professional online booking facility!
Move towards 100% Occupancy - if wanted!
Without an easy method of dealing with payments from tourists visiting
the UK, many bookees can be put off. Even tourists willing to make
complicated fund transfers are often tempted to book where they
know they can make a simple online payment to secure the accomodation.
Because the EBS calendar also offers a facility to send out payment links
in the
booking confirmation emails, tourists from outside the UK can pay
with ease, and are therefore much more likely to book the "difficult
weeks". What's more the system works using a simple and trusted
Paypal account, which the cottage owner can set up in minutes!
Concerned about making the change?
Listed below are the answers to a few questions which will hopefully
address the major concerns that you might have about using an online
booking calendar. If your concern is not addressed here then please
feel free to send your question to our
and we will do our best to answer it.
Question
How can a web based real time booking calendar also work with a
paper based approach, which lets me take bookings immediately over
the phone? Surely this is not possible!
Answer
The online booking calendar works as you would expect from any real-time
web based booking system. The beauty of the EBS booking calendar
is in the way that it "communicates" with your paper based
record of bookings/availability. Each time a booking is made using
your online calendar you receive a text message to your mobile informing
you that a particular slot is now booked. Simply cross it off the
paper based record which you printed out the last time you accessed
your PC. As long as you mark off booked dates each time you receive
a text to your mobile you will be able to deal with phone enquiries
in an informed manner - see question immediately below.
Question
I am interested in online booking but.......if I use this calendar
for online bookings then what do I do if a customer rings me and
enquires about specific dates? Because I am unlikely to be online
at the time of the call, and someone else may have booked online,
I cannot guarantee them the dates that they have asked for. What
do I do about this?
Answer
To gain all of the benefits of using a real time booking calendar
you will need to deal with phone bookings in the following way:
1) Advise the customer that their dates are available at the moment,
by referrring to the compact one page Availability Report printed
from the calendar system. (or use your up to date SMS report!)
2) Tell them that you can confirm this at 6:00pm (or whenever you
plan to check your bookings/email) by email or by phone, as you
also take online bookings.
3) Jot down their name, phone number, and email address if they
have one.
Back at home:
4) Make the provisional booking for them online.
5) If they wanted it confirmed by email then make the booking confirmed
online. If they want a return call then phone them and confirm online
at that point..
Question
Why should I change the way I handle my phone bookings. I have been
doing it this way for a long time and it works for me?
Answer
90% of bookees will visit your web site first as it is now the most
commonly used method of finding out further information about products
and services. Once an online method of securing dates is available,
this will become the preferred way of securing booking dates, and
you won't have to compete with other sites which the customer may
have emailed requests to. The amount of phone enquiries about availability
will fall dramatically. This will be further reduced by customers
who made phone bookings(with email addresses supplied) getting email
confirmations which include a link to your booking calendar, giving
them little reason to phone about availability the next time! You
can now spend nearly all of your time speaking to customers about
what they want out of their holiday, and not about availability!
You have now brought your business up to date with how customers
today expect to be able to book! What's more you get access to all
of the other useful features designed to make life easier for cottage
owners from the calendar system!
If
you have been interested in what you have read and perhaps have
further questions, click on this link to contact us.
Click
on this link to view some of our existing users.
If
you would like to be considered for a free trial click on this link
to read more.
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