For the love of all that’s holy…

[Morticia]

…GO! Right now! Try to make a reservation from your website like you’re a guest. Clear your cache first.

Yes, I’m trying to make reservations to go somewhere. I may just drive the three hours both ways and forget it. The places below are charging a minimum of $250/night, most were $300+.

Answer these questions:

• Is it a real reservation or a ‘request’? You’re in a new century. Get with the program.
• Are the prices available on your reservation page, or is the guest guessing how much the room will cost? Guess what, they won’t.
• Do you charge an additional $50/night in ‘fees’? That had better be up front and center.
• Does your reservation company’s page load in under thirty seconds? It had better be under 5! If you have to warn me I might have to wait, I won’t.
• If you have the exact same header photo on every page of the reservation process and it takes up the entire top half of the page, I’m going to assume your site does not work. I am not going to scroll to see if the page changed.
• It’s 2022, not 2019, not 2020. Update your home page!
• Make sure your page links work. I just looked at one site where every tab, no matter what it was labeled, took me to a page that had the inn address on it, nothing else. Reservations? Inn address. Contact us? Inn address. Rooms? Inn address.
• Verify your text. If you write out ‘sixty’ do not put 30)’ in parentheses.

 

[gillumhouse]

Thanks. I fixed a few things and will need to change a couple photos. need to get the Happenings 2022 schedule from City Hall.

 

[ChrisandShelley]

On my to do list, but I'm bumping it up. It's one of those things that I keep putting on the back burner. Thinking about adding a FAQ for BnB newbies.

Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Morticia]

On my to do list, but I'm bumping it up. It's one of those things that I keep putting on the back burner. Thinking about adding a FAQ for BnB newbies.

Thanks for the reminder.

Please do move it up the list. It was so incredibly frustrating. Especially given the rates. No one at the $300/night level should have guests requesting reservations or have their reservation software take over 30 seconds to load.

In case anyone is wondering—the slow loading one was availability online, every time.

I did a FAQ for our site. It didn’t get much traffic and it didn’t change the number of guests asking all the questions. But, it made me feel likethe website was easier to use for someone like myself who doesn’t want to call to ask questions at midnight.

 

[JimBoone]

Answer these questions:

Is it a real reservation or a ‘request’? Live, your room when you hit submit

Are the prices available on your reservation page? On the reservation page when you put in a request with a date, not on static pages with room pictures as there are too many variables.

Do you charge an additional $50/night in ‘fees? Depends, normally no, but for those who attempt to add several extra guests, yep, there is a charge to discourage that action.

Does your reservation company’s page load in under thirty seconds? I hope, although I expect every system has issues at times.

If you have the exact same header photo on every page of the reservation process and it takes up the entire top half of the page, I’m going to assume your site does not work. I am not going to scroll to see if the page changed. Pictures are different although scrolling may depend on the device being used.

It’s 2022, not 2019, not 2020. Update your home page! Why? I differ from most on this subject, my view is page should provide easy to find information, I'll watch TV if I want something that moves, blinks and distracts me from my purpose.

Make sure your page links work. I just looked at one site where every tab, no matter what it was labeled, took me to a page that had the inn address on it, nothing else. Guilty on at least one link that is a placeholder on a page of activities. Outside links I do try to check every so often.

Verify your text. If you write out ‘sixty’ do not put 30)’ in parentheses. A good proofreader is hard to find and too often I think we (as the writer) see what we meant to write rather than what went on paper.

 

[jniles]

Good afternoon Morticia - sounds like you were having trouble using the Availability Online service for one of our customers. The average load time for our engine is about 1.7 seconds. In rare cases, slow loads can occur because there is an issue with Innkeeper's website code/script which is being used within our pages. This is usually easily remedied. Can you message me as to which lodging property is having the slow load problem? I will then fix the issue for them.

Also, we do still offer our customers the option to use a Reservation Request form vs. a Reservation form. Those who choose to use the Request form do so because they still want more control over their bookings, confirmations, guests, etc. I'm not saying that is best practice, but it's what some of our customers feel more comfortable doing. We do offer, and most use, our Reservation form that can calculate nightly rates, cleaning/reservation fees, taxes, additional person fees, up-sell items, etc.

Again, it would be much appreciated if you could pass on the name of that slow load customer.

Thanks
Julie Niles - Availability Online
[email protected]

 

[Morticia]

@jniles Hi Julie! It wasn’t just one, it was all of them. They are all in the same general location around Hanover, NH. At this point, I’m not going to be able to figure out which ones. I was using a list found on the Dartmouth college website.

 

[jniles]

@jniles Hi Julie! It wasn’t just one, it was all of them. They are all in the same general location around Hanover, NH. At this point, I’m not going to be able to figure out which ones. I was using a list found on the Dartmouth college website.

Thanks for the information. I looked into this and found that two lodging properties on the Dartmouth College lodging page lodginglist use Availability Online. I wasn't able to reproduce a loading issue for either of them. Hopefully it was just a strange one-time anomaly. I've made a note to keep an eye on these two accounts over the next week to be sure all is well. Thanks again.