Choosing a new reservation software

[muirford]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

In Weberv 2.0, the availability calendar that is seen by the innkeeper has the names of the guests in the appropriate days on the calendar (on the detail calendar, not the monthly view). You can click on this to find out the details of the reservation, including number of guests. I don't know if this is viewable on a PDA - the old Weberv calendar was very clunky on my Palm Treo. However, I have just ordered an Instinct so I will see how it is on there.

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

In Weberv 2.0, the availability calendar that is seen by the innkeeper has the names of the guests in the appropriate days on the calendar (on the detail calendar, not the monthly view). You can click on this to find out the details of the reservation, including number of guests. I don't know if this is viewable on a PDA - the old Weberv calendar was very clunky on my Palm Treo. However, I have just ordered an Instinct so I will see how it is on there.
.

Hmmm, that sounds interesting.
I visited http://www.webervations.com/examples.html assuming I could see a demo of this in action (both on my PC and iPhone) but the links are broken.
I would love to see a demo of this in action....

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

I don't have an iphone but I know there is VNC client for the iphone that apparently allows you to see and control your windows pc (where RezovationGT would be running). this might give you the access you need without having to pay for the booking engine.
.

Swirt:
The vnc client is not a bad idea, but I find it runs WAY too slow over a cellular network.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

I have to admit, it is quite neat to talk to someone who strives at pleasing the customer....RezOvation pretty much has my vote so far.

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.

 

[swirt]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

I have to admit, it is quite neat to talk to someone who strives at pleasing the customer....RezOvation pretty much has my vote so far.
.

I have to admit, it is quite neat to talk to someone who strives at pleasing the customer....RezOvation pretty much has my vote so far.

I'm not sure how long you've been hanging out here but I can attest that John has made several changes to how products work based on input from people on this forum and the ABOUT forum. I've worked with several availability system companies and I have not experienced another where improvements are continually made and in a timely manner. Superinn has gone largely unchanged for the past 6 years and webervations completely stalled out (and collapsed) under its initial switch to version 2.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.

 

[muirford]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/

 

[muirford]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/
.

I have been on the blog, and gotten an unsatisfactory response; I have called twice and am now referred to the programmers. I don't know what that means, as I thought I was already talking to programmers, but obviously not. I haven't been informed if it's a Webervations 2.0 problem but none of my availability data is showing up properly on the calendar or on inquiries. It may be true you're not seeing many problems but it seems that not all of the options were tested thoroughly before the transition. I don't think there are a lot of customers on Webervations 2.0.
I'd like to not jump to any conclusions, but frankly I don't need this hassle today and I don't have time to continually check the blog and fool around with trying things on the Friday before a holiday weekend. I am most concerned that I have still heard nothing back from anyone there and in less than two hours people will be leaving for a three-day weekend, and I will not have my problem fixed.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/
.

I have been on the blog, and gotten an unsatisfactory response; I have called twice and am now referred to the programmers. I don't know what that means, as I thought I was already talking to programmers, but obviously not. I haven't been informed if it's a Webervations 2.0 problem but none of my availability data is showing up properly on the calendar or on inquiries. It may be true you're not seeing many problems but it seems that not all of the options were tested thoroughly before the transition. I don't think there are a lot of customers on Webervations 2.0.
I'd like to not jump to any conclusions, but frankly I don't need this hassle today and I don't have time to continually check the blog and fool around with trying things on the Friday before a holiday weekend. I am most concerned that I have still heard nothing back from anyone there and in less than two hours people will be leaving for a three-day weekend, and I will not have my problem fixed.
.

I just met with them. It is a problem with the way graphics are generated and we think we have it solved. As far as options being tested - I can assure you that we've been testing this like crazy. No one here has left the office since yesterday morning either - and they are not leaving until this is fixed. They will be here all weekend making sure that there are not any issues, and this isn't a holiday weekend for us - we do not have Monday off.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/
.

I have been on the blog, and gotten an unsatisfactory response; I have called twice and am now referred to the programmers. I don't know what that means, as I thought I was already talking to programmers, but obviously not. I haven't been informed if it's a Webervations 2.0 problem but none of my availability data is showing up properly on the calendar or on inquiries. It may be true you're not seeing many problems but it seems that not all of the options were tested thoroughly before the transition. I don't think there are a lot of customers on Webervations 2.0.
I'd like to not jump to any conclusions, but frankly I don't need this hassle today and I don't have time to continually check the blog and fool around with trying things on the Friday before a holiday weekend. I am most concerned that I have still heard nothing back from anyone there and in less than two hours people will be leaving for a three-day weekend, and I will not have my problem fixed.
.

Should be all fixed now - the availability calendards are actually jpeg images created repeatedly throughout the day. The set of main files for many of them was corrupted, so we had to reload. It looks like it is mostly finished and your website is up again.

 

[muirford]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/
.

I have been on the blog, and gotten an unsatisfactory response; I have called twice and am now referred to the programmers. I don't know what that means, as I thought I was already talking to programmers, but obviously not. I haven't been informed if it's a Webervations 2.0 problem but none of my availability data is showing up properly on the calendar or on inquiries. It may be true you're not seeing many problems but it seems that not all of the options were tested thoroughly before the transition. I don't think there are a lot of customers on Webervations 2.0.
I'd like to not jump to any conclusions, but frankly I don't need this hassle today and I don't have time to continually check the blog and fool around with trying things on the Friday before a holiday weekend. I am most concerned that I have still heard nothing back from anyone there and in less than two hours people will be leaving for a three-day weekend, and I will not have my problem fixed.
.

I just met with them. It is a problem with the way graphics are generated and we think we have it solved. As far as options being tested - I can assure you that we've been testing this like crazy. No one here has left the office since yesterday morning either - and they are not leaving until this is fixed. They will be here all weekend making sure that there are not any issues, and this isn't a holiday weekend for us - we do not have Monday off.
.

The availability calendar is fixed; now I'm just waiting for my room images to come back.
About software testing - for the first 10 years of my career I was a software requirement generator/test person. Much to the dismay of every person I work with on software in the current. That's how I met my husband - he wrote software that I tested. It was rigorous software testing for defense contracts. It has been years since I have met anyone who tests software the way I think it should be done, except for my husband (who still writes encryption software and web applications for life insurance). I suspect Swirt is right up there, although I've never made him jump through my hoops personally.
My initial requests for help got kinda blown off as being DNS issues, even though I could clearly see that they were not. It took a second phone call, and a second post to the blog - and maybe this post to you - before the bug was addressed. IMO the debugging after the discrepancy was reported was shallow or nonexistent. I hope it doesn't always take a note to you to get a problem looked into, although I certainly appreciate your willingness to do so. The second customer support person I talked to (Michael) definitely took the report more seriously and followed up when the problem was fixed.
I appreciate that the software you're moving is not in the best shape it could be - I've been on Weberv 2.0 for some time now and know that the bugs are still numerous and significant. Having my booking engine offline for more than 12 hours just isn't a good way to start off a new relationship.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

I would be happy today if my Webervations calendar were working, which it's not. The migration to a new server has left me with a blank availability calendar and when I pass through to the Webervations site all rooms show available, even ones that are not, and customers have called saying that they have tried to make reservations and cannot. Whose idea was it to do this right before a holiday weekend?
.

Have you checked the blog? There are some specifics there - but I will look into your property right now as well. In general, we are not seeing many issues.
http://blog.rezovation.com/
.

I have been on the blog, and gotten an unsatisfactory response; I have called twice and am now referred to the programmers. I don't know what that means, as I thought I was already talking to programmers, but obviously not. I haven't been informed if it's a Webervations 2.0 problem but none of my availability data is showing up properly on the calendar or on inquiries. It may be true you're not seeing many problems but it seems that not all of the options were tested thoroughly before the transition. I don't think there are a lot of customers on Webervations 2.0.
I'd like to not jump to any conclusions, but frankly I don't need this hassle today and I don't have time to continually check the blog and fool around with trying things on the Friday before a holiday weekend. I am most concerned that I have still heard nothing back from anyone there and in less than two hours people will be leaving for a three-day weekend, and I will not have my problem fixed.
.

I just met with them. It is a problem with the way graphics are generated and we think we have it solved. As far as options being tested - I can assure you that we've been testing this like crazy. No one here has left the office since yesterday morning either - and they are not leaving until this is fixed. They will be here all weekend making sure that there are not any issues, and this isn't a holiday weekend for us - we do not have Monday off.
.

The availability calendar is fixed; now I'm just waiting for my room images to come back.
About software testing - for the first 10 years of my career I was a software requirement generator/test person. Much to the dismay of every person I work with on software in the current. That's how I met my husband - he wrote software that I tested. It was rigorous software testing for defense contracts. It has been years since I have met anyone who tests software the way I think it should be done, except for my husband (who still writes encryption software and web applications for life insurance). I suspect Swirt is right up there, although I've never made him jump through my hoops personally.
My initial requests for help got kinda blown off as being DNS issues, even though I could clearly see that they were not. It took a second phone call, and a second post to the blog - and maybe this post to you - before the bug was addressed. IMO the debugging after the discrepancy was reported was shallow or nonexistent. I hope it doesn't always take a note to you to get a problem looked into, although I certainly appreciate your willingness to do so. The second customer support person I talked to (Michael) definitely took the report more seriously and followed up when the problem was fixed.
I appreciate that the software you're moving is not in the best shape it could be - I've been on Weberv 2.0 for some time now and know that the bugs are still numerous and significant. Having my booking engine offline for more than 12 hours just isn't a good way to start off a new relationship.
.

Well, not sure what to say on this one besides we've been trying our best to make this work smoothly and I believe it is there now. We got a batch of images (that we never even were made aware of needed to be uploaded until 2am last night) that was corrupted. We had to go download them all again (which took hours), then we literally drove them over on a USB stick to the server facility to cut down on upload time. By the time I had seen your post, they had already been working on the issue for an hour.
For the most part, the move of over 200 distribution sites and 6500 properties went off without a hitch. Webervations 2.0 was another story though with a few more wrinkles. I regret that it didn't go off seamlessly - this one took us completely by surprise. Issues like this don't take a post to get to, but I hope you can understand with literally hundreds of properties emailing about DNS and image issues, it was not easy to figure out which responses were different issues, investigate, and respond to every single request while at the same time actually be in there fixing and coding the system. I think my guys did a great job here though, particularly considering our testing team doesn't have the budget of most defense contractors!

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers

Great - were there any other needs besides the availability calendar stuff? Are you on an iphone or something similar with the big/rotating screen?
Thanks,
JB

 

[geminixo]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers

Great - were there any other needs besides the availability calendar stuff? Are you on an iphone or something similar with the big/rotating screen?
Thanks,
JB
.

I am on an iPhone now.
I really just want as much functionality from Rezovation ported to the iphone as possible.
However, the priority is the availability calender, modifying, and creating new reservations.

 

[JBanczak]

Thanks, I appreciate that feedback. I know I get a little over-zealous sometimes. I really do believe in the product and am proud of the work people have done here - so sometimes it is hard to hold back!.

I wonder with this whole mobile phone, and iphone craze....is anyone releasing booking software for them?
I pondered this the other day as I was looking at my iPhone.....wouldn't it be great if I could look a my reservation calender while on the road?
I don't think I would like the phone to do anything else (reports or POS,) but simply the ability to sync with my reservation database over 3G and view the calendar for some quick bookings....that would be my dream...an absolute dream.
.

We've had that for two years actually. Comes with every package we have at no extra charge. It is the Reo Mobile BE. You can see info here:
http://www.rezovation.com/booking_engine_mobile.html
I'm happy to go into more details here as well. It can be very handy. Allows the innkeeper to see availability, rates, book rez from most mobile phones. It can even be setup for consumers to book off your website if you have that type of sophistication.
.

I saw that a while ago actually....but it seems as though I can only poll for a date, and see the rooms available.
Is there a way to see a calendar on the iphone with that software?
.

Actually, the iphone works shockingly well with the existing software - both the availability calendar and the entire booking process (our AC leads right into a booking). I just tried it out, even took a screen shot of the availability calendar. Checked it on a Google Android phone and it worked well, I'm guessing it should be fine on a Blackberry Storm and the Samsung device as well since they are similar screen size and resolution. In fact, the entire booking process including packaging worked pretty easily. I actually feel rather stupid for not trying this and knowing it already.
I have some screen shots right from the iphone - see below. They are not fuzzy like this on the iphone screen. I took a screenshot of the ipod and emailed it to my work about, then another screenshot of that and then uploaded it here:

.

Wow, that's impressive. Especially from a potential guest point of view.
So to recap, you can view your own availability calendar in the same way a guest can. Guests can book online or you can book for them using that other interface.
.

I am hoping though, that this interface can be strictly for admistrative purposes, right?...I am not confortable with online bookings for my establishment just yet. Just the ability to view my availability calendar through my iphone or other mobile device, and perhaps make a booking.
Rezovation seems to fit the bill though...I am very impressed. However, I noticed on your pictures that I can't see the reservations themselves (just the X's.) It would be helpful to be able to review the reservation to see if it could be moved to a similar (or upgraded,) to accomodate another booking. (For example, if I have a couple in a room with a queen for two nights, but I have a potential customer who needs that particular room for a week, I move the couple to one of my suites to accomodate the new booking. It's hard to make those judgement calls by looking only at those X's.
.

Yes, you can make this available only for yourself if you are not comfortable with online reservations. You get a link to this availability calendar - but you do not have to put this link on your website. What you are seeing here is as Swirt described - it is what a consumer would see also.
In terms of seeing the actual reservations, then no, we don't have anything designed for the mobile application.
The use case we designed our original mobile app for, and the one that I think applies the most... is the case where you are not in front of a pc, and you get a phone call asking to make a reservation. You need to check availability, and easily book. That may not solve all of the things one may want to do via a mobile application, but it seemed to be the use case we heard from 99% of innkeepers that were interested in it.
The use case you mention, moving someone, is definitely an interesting one. I think a lot of that would depend on your knowledge of the room and of the guest. To design a mobile app where you could see that type of detail on guests, in a quick/easy booking screen that could be viewed while another guest is on the line would be challenging. Not that it wouldn't be handy, but from a design point of view that could be tricky.
Maybe there is somewhere in between though.... perhaps we could show a display where instead of the X, it just shows a number... and that is the number of guests? Perhaps even something that says 2/4 - where 2 is guests, 4 is capacity... Or perhaps even in the room column, we could put the number of beds (i.e. 2Q) and instead of the X, we put the number of guests in the rez? You would still likely have to book the "wrong" room via the handheld, and correct it all when you got in front of a pc... but at least you would have more information.
Just thinking out loud.
.

Probably more important than showing how many in the rooms would be to show by use of colored blocks to show weather the same person has it for 3 days or if there are 3 1-nighters.
.

Swirt has is bang on. At least, if we could see that a trail of 5 X's meant one 3 night reservation and a two nighter...or a 4 nighter and a 1 nighter...at least the administrator would be able to see the difference.
I am not going to pretend to be a programmer, but if you managed to figure out how to divide the Xs into different reservation pieces...then couldn't you link those divisions to the reservations? It order to divide the Xs, you're going to have to make another query to the Database anyways. If the user taps a reservation piece, you simply query the reservation table and take out the appropriate data.
.

That makes sense. I think that would be easier even - let me check.
Also - this is a RezOvation product, not a Webervations product. It comes with our GT program. To see a demo, go here: http://www.thehillcountryinn.com/, on your iphone, and click "check availability." this will pop-up the availability calendar.
This will make more sense when you are trying it, but another enhancement would be to run a date row in between every room row, so that if you are zooming/scrolling around you don't lose track of the dates.
Ultimately we'd make a few usability enhancements to make it nicer - like dropping photos of rooms in the innkeeper view, getting rid of any border/graphic padding/etc. Surprisingly it works pretty well right now. I'm going to take a look at Webervations when I get into the office as well.
.

Wow...I just tried the hill country inn demo...I am impressed by the calendar...but being able to see the reservations (obviously, not for the customer,) would be handy.
.

Thanks for the nice comments guys. We definitely try hard here - we don't always get it right, but we definitely try.
I met with Ben and Doug (product manager and one of the four developers that works on GT). This should actually be a relatively easy project to do, meaning we are talking a couple months/not years to put something together. Anything else something like this should do? Here is what I have so far:
1) GT AC functionality optimized for iPhone, Android, Storm, perhaps others (we know those three work).
2) Add functionality to display booked rooms by length of stay - so if there is a 3 night rez, group that by color/border/something apparent so it is easy to tell
3) Optimize display so borders/images/etc. are minimized - this is innkeeper only
4) Add date rows in between rooms
Let me know if there is anything else you can think of and we'll see what we can do.
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers
.

When you finish that project...or at least require someone to beta test it...please keep me in mind and email me....it is simply my username at hotmail.com
If this program could solve my mobile needs, I would buy it in an instant...but I would need to demo it first.
Cheers

Great - were there any other needs besides the availability calendar stuff? Are you on an iphone or something similar with the big/rotating screen?
Thanks,
JB
.

I am on an iPhone now.
I really just want as much functionality from Rezovation ported to the iphone as possible.
However, the priority is the availability calender, modifying, and creating new reservations.
.

Thanks -
The AC seems to be pretty good already - we'll work on making it a little cleaner. Taking a rez isn't a problem either. Modifying is another issue entirely, and that is going to require a bit more work and quite honestly won't be something we can do shortly.