To manage your booking engine settings, navigate to Settings > Booking Engine

To enable a feature, check the appropriate box to the left of the description.

This article will go through each option in the Booking Engine settings page.

At the top of the page, is the URL or link to your online booking engine. You can navigate here when you are ready to preview your booking engine experience.

This feature will display an availability calendar at the bottom of the search results page.

This feature will ask the guest, but not require, what their dietary restrictions are. The content they provide will populate in the dietary restrictions field in their reservation.

This feature will ask the guest, but not require, what their additional guest names are. This content provided will populate into the additional guest name field in their reservation.

When disabled/unchecked, the online booking engine will ask for the number of guests.

When enabled/checked, the online booking engine will ask for the number of adults and children. If the guest indicates that there are children, it will then ask for the ages with a new age box for each child. This allows the system to enforce your child occupancy rules.

Once the specify they are brining children, it will ask them their ages.

It's not possible to adjust the age range in the dropdown.

When checked, the system will add a "Add room" option in the booking engine so the guest can book multiple bookings on a single reservation.

When checked, guests will be able to apply a gift certificate code on the confirmation page of the booking engine. This allows guests to redeem one or more ThinkReservations gift certificate on their own online.

The certificate must meet the following to be redeemed online:

Guests that attempt to redeem a certificate that doesn't meet the above criteria will see a popup informing them the gift certificate code is invalid.

When this is checked, guests can add themselves to the Wait List. For the Wait List to be displayed, the guest must search for a time period where you have zero availability, or when no rate types are available for their search parameters.

With this box checked, guests will see the Special Rates button where they can select to enter a coupon/promo code or select a customer group. If the box is cleared, the option is not visible for guests.

With this box checked, the options to select a customer group or Promo Code is shown by default. This is recommended if you offer promotions regularly or use customer groups.
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If the box is cleared, the guest will need to click on Special Rates to see the form field.

The search page is the first page on the booking engine. You can have a short message to your guests on either the top or bottom.

This will be at the top of the search page message. It will always be all caps and bold. The field can also be left blank.

This is the text box where you enter the message that should appear on the search page of the booking engine.

Here you can select if the search page message should be at the top or bottom of the widget.

ThinkReservations lets you control how much lead time you need for reservations made through the ThinkReservations online booking engine. This is not communicated to OTAs. Enter a number (0-1500) in the box, indicating the number of days notice you need for online reservations. If a prospective guest searches for a reservation in the booking engine, the system will display a message to the guest indicating that the room is available only by calling your number, based on what you have entered into the field. The system will still show that proper availability and your phone number is present in line with the message.

When the Minimum Notice for Online Reservations is set to 0, the system will allow same-day reservations online. The Same Day Cutoff Time feature will enable you to place a cutoff time for same-day reservations to be booked online. This settings indicates the cutoff time for when the guest can start the process of booking their reservation.

Why does the booking engine say "Only available by calling"?

Because you are searching for dates within the lead time you have configured in your booking engine settings.

This option determines how many days in advance a guest can make a reservation. If left blank, a guest can make a reservation up to one year in advance by default. Fill in the box with an alternative number if you would like to widen or narrow reservation lead time.

This setting controls the initial value for number of guests when someone first enters the booking engine. If you more often have single guests, you might change this to 1 guest. Note this is just the default; the guest can still change this in the booking engine.

Controls the length of the initial date range used for searching when someone first enters the booking engine. If you require a 2-night minimum, this is a great way to plant the seed that the guest should look for 2 nights. Note this is just the default; the guest can still change this in the booking engine.

Selects the initial country value for a guest's address on the registration page. This can save a step for your guests, so it should be set to the country where most of your guests are from.

This setting allows you to control what icons are shown in the booking engine. If you would like the icons of the credit card types which your business accepts as payment to appear on the booking engine page when a guest is filling out their reservation details, then mark the appropriate boxes.

First, decide if you want to ask guests for an arrival time at all by using the toggle to enable or disable.

If you have enabled the "Ask customer for their arrival time" option, then you will need to indicate your check-in window by choosing timed from the drop-downs. The window of time between the Earliest Arrival Time and the Latest Arrival Time dictates the drop-down for guests in the booking engine, and staff in the reservation screen. There is also an "Other (Specify below)" option where the guest can indicate if they are going to be arriving outside the set times.

The business image is the main image that is displayed on the first page (Search Page) of the booking engine. The image is just to the left of the Check Availability form. You can upload a new image as often as you wish. One great suggestion is to include text on your image.
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All images automatically get Alt Text via AI, but you can edit that alt text at any time within the Media Library.

Click the black Save button at the very bottom when you are ready to commit your changes.