You can use the booking functionality for any business on any WordPress website. However, if you’re running a hotel, equipment, or car rental business, you must allow your clients to book/rent the items online.
What to Look for When Choosing a WordPress Booking Plugin?
When you are looking for an Elementor booking plugin, pay attention to these points:
- Ease of use. Is it convenient for your customers to book services and for you to manage bookings?
- Ease of setup. How long will it take you to configure all the features?
- Integration possibilities. Does the plugin of your choice integrate with Google calendar, mailing services, and payment systems?
- Plugin functionality. Does the selected plugin have all the necessary features?
- Price. Does the cost of the plugin live up to the functionality?
Clients should be able to get complete information about the product or service they are willing to book. Also, filling in the form should be effortless and transparent for them. Finally, when there are tons of orders and dozens of clients waiting for their orders to be processed, a website administrator must use time efficiently and manage quickly.
JetBooking, in combination with other JetPlugins, meets those goals in total. The requests submitted via booking form are saved in WordPress automatically as Custom Posts. In addition, the plugin integrates with top-flight services such as Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat), which are irreplaceable tools if we are talking about automation.
It’s more than easy to sync your booking system with Google Sheets and Mailchimp audiences. Plus, clients have the opportunity to check if the item is available for booking. Also, you can easily add flexible pricing rates to fit various purposes and create a full-fledged booking site. Let’s get familiar with JetBooking by Crocoblock and explore its capabilities.
What Is Special About JetBooking?
All JetPlugins were crafted as Elementor add-ons to boost their functionality even more. So, what is so special about JetBooking? Here we are talking about the three main features:
1) the opportunity to specify the period to check items availability before booking;
2) the built-in functionality to automatically submit the booking requests to a database and save them in the form of custom posts in the WordPress dashboard;
3) the ability to add flexible pricing rates to fit various purposes: seasonal pricing, weekend pricing, price per day/night, etc.
Why JetBooking Should Be Combined with Other Plugins
Somebody may think the JetBooking plugin is just an Elementor booking form, but its functionality is much more extensive. Combine it with JetEngine, JetSmartFilters, and JetThemeCore. Let’s look at what each of the abovementioned plugins can do and why they are necessary to create a unified Elementor booking mechanism for your website.
Creating Booking Items with JetEngine
Items for booking are Custom Post Type posts that you create with JetEngine. Their content will be dynamically pulled and then booked by the site visitors.
Assume you are the owner of a small hotel in need of establishing a booking functionality on your Elementor website. With the help of JetEngine, you can easily create Custom Post Types and enrich them with meta boxes and complex relations.
Plus, JetEngine originally comes with Forms functionality, with the help of which you can build any structure of your booking form and enrich it with various field types, from textual to calculated ones. Thus, your site visitors can fill in the Form and add detailed information to complete their request fully. Furthermore, the JetBooking plugin enabled additional functionality of the Form — Check-in/check-out dates field type. So, what’s next? For JetBooking to work as intended, you can create a CPT like “Rooms” (for the items to book) and CPT “Orders” (that will connect information about room reservations).
Correct Elements Display with JetThemeCore
To display the Rooms CPT, you’ll need an Archive page to display the entire grid and the Single page to showcase detailed information and embed the booking form. Here the JetThemeCore library will come in handy.
If you’re an Elementor Pro fan, the JetBooking plugin will work with it just perfectly as well.
Displaying Available Rooms with JetSmartFilters
As a user, you must check the room’s availability before booking it. JetSmartFilters, with its Date Range filter, will be responsible for that. This plugin has a specially developed checkin_checkout key, which you should insert in the Query Variable field. As a result, selecting the dates for which the room is unavailable won’t be possible.
Convenient Booking Website with JetBooking
We have items to book. They are displayed properly on Archive and Single pages. We can filter them by dates and see their availability. Now we need to allow visitors to actually book them.
But you can’t book anything if you don’t have a booking form. With the JetEngine or JetFormBuilder plugin, it is super easy to create one.
- Create a table with needed parameters (order ID, name, email, number of people, etc.). Also, the relations between two CPTs should be established in the corresponding fields.
- After a client submits a booking, the information will be sent to the database and duplicated to your prepared CPT for future orders.
You get the opportunity to manage your bookings both in the WordPress Dashboard and in the database. Another major benefit is that you don’t have to manually transfer reservation requests from the email to your website – everything is done automatically.
If your client contacted you willing to make some changes to the reservation they made, just edit Orders Custom Post Type and modify it according to your client’s request. Information will be updated in the database immediately.
You can create convenient booking forms where customer data will automatically be entered. Regular customers will appreciate this feature. They no longer have to re-enter their email or name each time. Data will be pulled from previous bookings. What about booking form styling? You can do it in every way possible. Just drop the Form widget in Elementor and adjust the Style settings in a visual mode.
You get the opportunity to manage your bookings both in the WordPress Dashboard and in the database. Another major benefit is that you don’t have to transfer reservation requests from the email to your website manually – everything is done automatically.
if your client contacted you willing to make some changes in the reservation he’s done just edit “Orders” Custom Post Type and make the changes according to your client’s request, and information will be updated in the database as well.
What about Booking Form styling? You can do it in every way possible. Just drop the Form widget in Elementor and adjust the Style settings in a visual mode.
Add Flexible Pricing Rates to Fit Various Purposes
Do you have special offers for those who book your service for the weekend? Or maybe you want to show great prices during the high season?
With JetBooking, you don’t have to change prices manually every time. Set the conditions once, and just get bookings.
Google Calendar Sync: Building a Connection
The cherry on top: you can see all your booking orders in Google Calendar. Currently, there are two ways to connect the booking form: Zapier and Make (formerly Integromat). Want to know more?
Building a hook with Zapier
Zapier is an online service used worldwide, allowing users to establish connections between various apps. In the context of the JetBooking plugin, you can easily create a hook for Google Calendar and sync it with the orders in the WordPress dashboard. Plus, using a multi-step Zapier option, it’s pretty handy to sync a booking form with Mailchimp to store clients’ emails and use it for future mailing.
Structuring scenario with Make (formerly Integromat)
Make (formerly Integromat) helps to combine multiple apps and sites. It can also be used to synchronize your orders with Google Calendar by creating a webhook and using it in your form. In addition, it has the option to set the period when the synchronization is made.
Best Service Thanks to Integration with GetResponse and Mailchimp
Many people book accommodation/transport/services well in advance. And some end up forgetting about their reservation. Improve your service with JetBooking integration with GetResponse and Mailchimp.
With their help, you can send booking confirmation, remind you of an upcoming event and send checks to the client by mail. Convenient, right?
BONUS FEATURE: WooCommerce integration
Setting the desired payment options for your website has never been easier. Just choose from the payment systems integrated into WooCommerce and activate the necessary ones on the dashboard. Now your website visitors can choose the payment method on the checkout page.
FAQ
You can do this with WordPress booking plugins. There are a lot of them. Pay attention to how convenient it is for your customers to book with this plugin and for you to manage the booking.
Yes. To do this, you need to enable such functionality in the plugin for creating bookings and connecting the mailing service.
You can avoid this by enabling Google Calendar and adding some functionality to your booking plugin. For example, the JetBooking plugin allows you to do this with built-in functionality. During plugin setup, you choose how many times users can book the same room or service and save the settings.
Conclusion
JetBooking allows you to create a variety of websites for booking. You can invite users to book a car, a hotel, or a weekend experience. The broad functionality of the plugin will allow you to create what you need in the best possible way. With JetEngine, you can add the necessary custom posts, and JetSmartFilters will cover the filtering of booking items.
JetPlugins and JetBooking can create a robust framework for custom post types, filter functions, and booking forms. As a website developer, you will be able to automate the booking process on the website through the booking module, forms, calculation formulas, and automated mailings. So use all JetBooking features and share your experience in the comments.
