Businesses like Hotel Reservations, Villa bookings, Tour Packages, Equipment or Costume on hire, etc., require a booking functionality that allows their customers to choose the check-in date and check-out date for their reservation. Here’s when the Booking & Appointment Plugin for WooCommerce plugin’s Multiple Nights Booking type comes in.
Multiple Nights booking is divided into these types:
- Simple products booking
- Variable products booking
- Minimum number of nights booking for multiple nights
- Maximum number of nights booking for multiple nights
Let’s look at how to configure the Multiple-nights bookings for Variable Products.
What is a Variable product?
The hotel industry is known for offering a wide range of options within a single service. For example, when booking a stay, customers can choose from various room types like single rooms, double rooms, and deluxe rooms. These different room categories represent variants of the core product offering, the Hotel Room, effectively making it a variable product.
You can set up variants for such products using WooCommerce Variable products and configure bookings with our Booking & Appointment Plugin for WooCommerce.
These settings work differently for Admin and Customers. Here is how it can be configured and work in both ends.
1. Admin Section
Let’s understand the instance of Hotel Hyatt, which provides different types of rooms that include: Deluxe, Super Deluxe, and Suites.
A variable product will have to be created for this variation of rooms. For that:
Go to Products -> Add Product link and create a bookable Hotel Hyatt product.
To make it a Variable product, you will have to add attributes and variations using the WooCommerce guide for Variable products.
You need to utilize variations since your hotel offers diverse room types, each with distinct rates tailored to the specific category.
Implementing variations allows customers first to select their preferred room type and then proceed to choose their desired booking dates, facilitating an informed decision-making process.
For Hotel Hyatt, create the following attributes and variations in the respective tabs to set and display the available room options.
Go to Product data of the product page, select the Variable product that you created, and then update in the Attributes and Variation tab as shown below.
Type of Rooms
- Delux – $1000
- Super Delux – $2000
- Suite – $3000
The variations and their rates can be set as per your requirements in the Variation tab.
Once done, the overall price while booking a room will be based on the chosen room type and the number of days selected for reserving a room.
This can be fulfilled using the Multiple Nights booking setup.
On the same Products page, scroll down to find the Booking Meta Box that allows you to set up your bookable product.
Enable the Booking option and select the Booking type as Multiple Nights.
Selecting the Multiple Nights option
Next, go to the Availability tab and add all the bookable weekdays along with the other settings:
Enabling bookable weekdays and additional settings
The details on additional settings in the Availability tab for the Advance Booking Period, Number of dates to choose, Minimum Booking on any Date, Minimum and Maximum Number of Nights to book can be found in our post on Multiple Nights booking for Simple Products.
Once done, your product is now ready to be booked for a variety of rooms with different prices as per the customer’s requirement.
Let us now look at how these settings would reflect on the front end for customers to make bookings.
2. Customer Section
The newly created product to take bookings for Hotel Hyatt will appear on the front end of the website as shown here:
Variable product displayed on the front end
The Type of Room option will be available on the product page.
This is because the three variations were added to the product. It implies that the room charges will be based on the type of room chosen and the number of nights selected by the customer.
Click on the Choose an option to view the dropdown.
Select the room type you want to book. For this instance, you can go with the Super Deluxe Room as shown below:
Selecting the appropriate room type
Now select the Start Date and End Date by clicking on the calendar as shown below:
Selecting the Start Date
The Start Date, also known as the check-in date, is set to 23rd March 2024.
Select the End Date as shown below:
Selecting the End Date
The End Date, which is also known as the check-out date is set to 28th March 2024.
Note that the total price for the room is calculated by considering the start and end dates along with the type of room selected.
In the above instance, the Super Deluxe room’s rate is $2000 per night for 5 Nights.
Therefore, the total price for the booking is automatically calculated and displayed at $10,000 for the customer.
Once the start date and end date are entered, the Book Now! button will get enabled as shown below:
Add to Cart button enabled after entering all details
The order gets added to your cart when you click the Book Now! button.
Clicking the View Cart button will redirect you to the Cart page, showing the customers their booking details.
In this case, you have selected the room quantity to be 2; therefore, the cost for two super deluxe rooms for 5 nights becomes $10,000 x 2 = $20,000
The Cart page showing details
Click the Proceed to checkout button to go to the Checkout page which gives you a preview of the actual order.
Review to ensure all the details are alright, then click the Place Order button.
Checkout page showing booking details
Your order is now placed, and you will receive an order confirmation message like the one shown below:
Order confirmation of the booking made
The above example illustrated how to configure a two Super Deluxe room booking for a 5-night stay, utilizing the Multiple Nights booking method designed for Variable products.
Likewise, this booking approach can be remarkably beneficial for rental businesses offering construction equipment, vehicles, properties for rent, and similar services.
These companies can set up their online storefront to showcase the available rental options with corresponding rates. This empowers customers to effortlessly browse and secure the desired rental services from conveniently presented assorted offerings.
In summary, implementing the Multiple Nights booking method for Variable products enables rental businesses to effectively organize and present their varied inventory in a user-friendly manner. Customers can easily identify, compare options, and complete bookings aligned with their specific requirements, streamlining the entire rental process.