Booking Engines for Small Hotels and Lodges

Update on Jan. 8, 2016. Little Hotelier offers a very competitive package, and I have added a new free booking engine to the list, WP My Bookings.

Some good booking engines are available for small hotels and lodges. The features that I was searching for included integration of a property management system (PMS) showing rooms booked, payment gateway, website interface, guest management emails/SMS, and customer database with enews capabilities (or at least the ability to export customer emails).

Sirvoy offers a clean booking interface and a well-organized dashboard. Emails can be configured for pre- and post-arrival. The cost is $30 per month, which includes a payment gateway (I recommend Stripe for small businesses.) The engine does not interface with an email client, so this step must be configured manually. The Irish-based company offers support 3 am to 5 pm EST (until 8pm EST Mon-Wed).

Little Hotelier is a cloud-based booking engine for small venues (bed and breakfasts, guesthouses, and small hotels). The booking form is a branded off-site page. The cost starts at $49/mo for 1-10 rooms to $99/mo for up to 100 rooms (other room options available). Guests can enter payment information but no payment gateway is available (scheduled to come online in July/August, 2016). US-based support is available 9-5 am CST (with ring-through to other country support at other hours).

For larger venues, Hotelogix might be a good choice. The cost is slightly higher (starting at $60), but the software boasts a nice dashboard and website booking form. The engine also integrates with newsletter programs such as Mailchimp.

Easy Reservations provides a free plugin, and the premium version is a lower cost alternative to some of the other engines. The premium version is around $150, which includes a year of support, and payment gateways including Paypal and Stripe. The backend PMS seems very functional, although the setup appears to be more involved than that of the other programs.

The Booking Button offers another good alternative, but the booking has no integrated property management system (PMS). The cost is reasonable, at $24 (?). The Booking Button company also promotes Little Hotelier (described above).

The Booking Engine is yet another relatively low cost option ($49); while a little less streamlined than the other engines, it’s worth a look.

Finally, the Capterra list of Top Reservation Products is a good source of further information.

Please share your thoughts on other booking engines in the comments section below. Thanks!

PS. I came across the Sabre Web Booking Engine, that also looks promising. I was not able to find details, however, but see the link for more information