Put a booking widget on your existing website

Already have a website you're happy with? You don't need to replace it to take direct bookings. The booking widget puts a live availability calendar and Book now buttons for one of your rooms straight onto a page of your existing site — a small snippet you paste in, no rebuild.

What visitors see

A month calendar for the room, showing live availability: dates with nothing left are clearly marked and can't be picked, and the price shown comes from your visible rates, so the widget never advertises a price a guest can't actually book. The visitor picks a date, chooses a stay length from the buttons you've configured, and gets Book now tiles with real prices. If the dates they wanted don't work, the widget offers nearby dates that do — the same no-dead-ends behaviour as your booking page. If a special applies, the tiles show the discounted price and the special's name.

How the booking happens

Book now carries the guest to your booking page's checkout with their dates and room already chosen. They pay there and the booking confirms onto your calendar like any other direct booking. Payment never happens on your own website, so there's nothing sensitive for your site to handle — the widget shows availability, and your booking page does the money.

Putting it on your site

1. Open Distribution → Booking Engine and go to the Widgets tab.
2. Pick the room the widget is for.
3. Choose the stay-length buttons to offer, the default number of guests, and an accent colour to match your site.
4. Check the live preview renders the calendar the way you want.
5. Copy the snippet and paste it into the page on your website where the widget should appear. Any website editor that lets you paste a small piece of code will take it.

The widget is per room, which is exactly what a room-by-room website wants: paste each room's widget onto that room's own page, so the houseboat page shows the houseboat's calendar and nothing else's.

Good to know

• The widget reads your live availability and prices — there's nothing to keep in sync by hand, and nothing to update when your rates change.
• Only prices you've ticked visible on the Rooms & Rates tab feed the widget, so a private rate can never undercut what's shown.
• If you've set a custom booking domain, the snippet uses it, keeping the whole journey on your own address — which also helps your ad tracking.
• If your site is built with Accommador's website builder instead, you may not need the widget at all — its Book now buttons keep themselves pointed at your booking page; see book-now buttons that always point to the right place.