Booking online for shows, travel, restaurant, hotels, and other online services is not only flexible, but it also ensures effective utilization of available resources and saves money and time simultaneously. It updates in real-time. You get to know – (1) the available seats, (2) slots, (3) the waiting time, (4) the charges in comparison to similar offerings, and the cancellation is always handy in case the offering is not suitable. You can select the time, place, and other amenities according to your preferences. Online reservations are – (1) effective, (2) easy, and (3) engaging. It enables business owners to offer their resources and drive revenues.
Points To Consider While Online Booking
- Clear all your cookies
- Use incognito mode
- Book via the hotel’s website
- Plugin your frequent flyer program numbers and then double-check
- Confirm your flight price on the actual airline website
- Pay for a bag in advance if you can’t fit everything into a carry-on
- Keep an eye on how and where you access travel websites.
Potential Vulnerabilities With Booking Websites
Travel and hospital agencies use contact-less payment processing systems and loyalty programs on public networks
- They require protecting such vulnerabilities against malicious bot attacks by considering all the information available on – (1) product and price pages, (2) availability, (3) limited-time offer, (4) user reviews, (5) ratings, (6) flight numbers, (7) booking slots, (8) filled slots, (9) soon to reopen Hackers use automated bots to scrape prices. They may manipulate, re-purpose, or reuse that information on other similar platforms. Such activities can drive traffic away from your website and worsen your SEO rankings.
- Hackers also use credential stuffing to buy a list of stolen or compromised user credentials from the dark web and create bots that rapidly rotate through these credentials on company login pages. This attack has the potential to worsen if customers to your website use the same passwords for many different websites. It allows cybercriminals to breach the entire system. It can slow down a company’s website performance, steal personal information from a customer’s account and sell it or use it for other malicious purposes.
- Vulnerable booking pages can be a site where bots can hold inventory. Automated bots can add several items to the cart and arrest them. It skews ‘key’ performance indicators (KPI’s) and stops actual customers from booking because they assume that not many seats are left. It poses a significant loss to the flight bookings and hotel reservations, which can lose a chunk of their revenue if such bots hold back on seats.
- As customers fill out the checkout page with their details like credit and debit card details, address, discount code, reward card number, hackers steal the card data that breaks the trust between the customer and the merchant.
- Also, developers need to be mindful of the bad bots and be proactive with a bot protection solution. You need to consider detection quality, ease of implementation, autonomy, SOC support, flexibility, latency, scalability.
- Let the experts do all the heavy lifting. Business owners can take a back seat and give a thought to assembling and scaling their business, right from finding the right anti-bot solution to adding a bit of AI-powered top-notch analytics.
Benefits of Online Booking
With the gradual reopening of nonessential businesses and services, many require “by appointment only” and ‘With social distancing” as much as possible. Online appointment booking platforms increase small business revenue. And as Covid-19 has ushered in an age of appointments, this trend is here to stay.
- Companies are operating in different ways as the world slowly opens, and a digital transformation towards online bookings, reminders and payments will increase efficiency and improve customer experience.
- Letting your customers book online unleashes the true potential of your business. Businesses can schedule appointments around the clock.
- Digital bookings through company websites, social media, and customer review sites capitalize on SEO traffic and minimize the chances of scheduling errors by sending appointments directly to client’s calendars. Integrating additional features such as automated text message reminders can significantly reduce missed opportunities for small retailers, salons, and medical practitioners.
- Online bookings save time, effort and resources that surface the best potential of any business. Integrating better technology makes it easier to schedule digitally and convert search traffic to sales.
What Should An Online Booking Platform Ensure?
Online booking platforms should integrate with their customer’s time schedules and calendars. To create a successful online booking system, consider three things –
- Ensure The Safety
- Automate The Workflow
- Overcome The Barriers
What Features Should An Online Booking System Have?
- It must include a calculator
- It must track all online bookings in real-time
- It must allow different currencies and languages
- It must allow occasional offerings like seasonal discounts etc.
- Customizable online booking page
- Automated SMS and email reminders
- The ability to set up 1-to-1 and group services as you need so you can avoid crowded waiting areas or long queues.
- Advanced calendar settings, search, filters, rate calculator
- Intelligent reporting
- External calendar synchronization
- It must enable hourly/weekly/monthly bookings for different purposes like shows, consultations, seminars, weddings, training classes and travel.
- It must have an attractive user interface, videos, messages and relevant images to assist the user.
- One-step checkout/payment
- It must be SEO friendly
What Are the Types of Booking Systems?
Bookings can be direct or indirect:
- Direct Bookings are through your online booking system, preferred by tour and activity operators. In this case, businesses do not have to pay any commissions to any agent. They generate revenue per booking if they can secure a direct reservation over their website.
- Indirect bookings come through a reselling agent. It could be a – (1) retail travel agent, (2) an OTA, (3) a hotel concierge, or (4) a representative from a local information centre. It allows increasing your reach within the travel industry and discovers your brand.
How to Find An Online Booking System That Suits Your Business?
No two businesses are identical. Therefore, the need to propel an online booking system differs from their specific offerings. To find the best fit, you need to check the features that you need. Compare your offerings with competitors within the same budget and region, and register for a free trial to access the full-feature set. The trial duration gives the necessary time to experiment with the product and brings you closer to what you desire at the end of it.
Conclusive: Is This an Online Booking System for You?
Online booking was an exclusive tool used by savvy businesses to gain a competitive advantage. Golden technologies compel companies to modernize the scheduling process and let it breathe. The online booking and reservation system is turning heads, enabling hundreds of thousands of users to craft their businesses into a resourceful bit. We create multifaceted online booking and reservation systems that facilitates customization; Inquire here!
About Author
Vipin Jain is the Co-Founder and CEO at Konstant Infosolutions and is in charge of marketing, project management, administration and R&D at the company. With his marketing background, Vipin Jain has developed and honed the company’s vision, corporate structure & initiatives and its goals, and brought the company into the current era of success.
