Hi all, Can Microsoft Bookings be used as an online booking system for a small accommodation such as a B&B or motel that doesn't currently have online booking capacity? Rather than booking different services, different rooms would be available to book for each nights. Would that work? Is that an ideal solution for these small business which otherwise book by phone or email?

That demo page looks good Gabriel, and it looks as though this could be extended to use for booking rooms in a community hall? We have 3 rooms, and people should be able to book them for part days, ideally it would be good to book additional services with them such as a number of chairs, tables etc but I think that will be hard. Are there any plans to extend Microsoft Bookings for this sort of scenario - I suspect there are quite a few businesses that would find it useful. Chris

Hi Chris - Thanks for your feedback! For now, we are not looking at being able to have more than one service booked at the same time but we have enabled "Custom fields" where you can ask your customer to submit specific information about their booking and you can make it so that they can't complete the booking without submitting that info. I hope that helps with your scenario for now. Thanks!

Hi Kushla, Bookings is not really designed for that scenario, but with a little extra work you can set up a workaround with some limitations. 1. You would need to add each room as a staff member 2. You would need to add the kind of rooms as services (I.e. Queen room, 2 twin beds, etc) and assign the staff/room to each service 3. You would need to setup specific time frames for each service (I.e. Set up 30 mins long per service) 4. You need to set your business hours from 3-30pm each day. This way, your customers can only book one service per day. I set this up with one bedroom as a test and it worked. You can see it https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/TrialGabrielhotel@microsoft.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/ Let me know if you have questions, depending on how many rooms you have, this could take a while to setup. Gabriel.

We are also looking for a booking solution for a community hall, but also something that can be expanded to any community resources (e.g. parks for weddings, barbecues, meeting rooms etc). It would be better if the staff list was not shown to users when booking in this scenario. More customisation is also required e.g. custom fields, relationships between services (e.g. if service x is booked then offer service y and z as options). Not sure that Bookings is mature enough for us at the moment, but looks like a great start and will be keeping an eye on its progress. I just hope they don't go the same way of all other booking apps in making it overly specific to predetermined use cases.

Hi Ian, Thanks for your feedback! The booking calendar admin can select to not show the staff list to its customers, in that case Bookings will randomly assign any staff member that is assigned to the service and free at the time of the appointment. We also released https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Add-custom-and-required-questions-to-the-Booking-page-fd6b7587-5055-4bcd-83a4-13bd4929bfff that allow you to request specific information about your customer or the appointment. Sadly, we do not support the cross-service scenario you described. Hope this helps!

Microsoft Bookings for small holiday accommodations businesses

12 Replies

Gabriel_Valdez
Former Employee
Jun 13, 2017
Hi Kushla,

Bookings is not really designed for that scenario, but with a little extra work you can set up a workaround with some limitations.

1. You would need to add each room as a staff member

2. You would need to add the kind of rooms as services (I.e. Queen room, 2 twin beds, etc) and assign the staff/room to each service

3. You would need to setup specific time frames for each service (I.e. Set up 30 mins long per service)

4. You need to set your business hours from 3-30pm each day. This way, your customers can only book one service per day.

I set this up with one bedroom as a test and it worked. You can see it https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/TrialGabrielhotel@microsoft.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/

Let me know if you have questions, depending on how many rooms you have, this could take a while to setup.

Gabriel.
- MSaelee
  Copper Contributor
  Aug 11, 2021
  Gabriel_Valdez Hi, how did you bypass entering the email when you added the room as "staff" members. Thank you.
- micha1975
  Copper Contributor
  Sep 04, 2020
  Gabriel_Valdez
  
  i m looking for using office 365 in our small hotel and saw microsoft bookings. i saw your post about reservation system small hotel.
  
  we have 13 double rooms who can be sold a 1 and as 3 pers room. is there a way i can make a booking system for that ? 3 pers. can stay out if to difficult..
  
  thank you
  - Gabriel_Valdez
    Former Employee
    Sep 10, 2020
    Hi Micha - Hotel reservations in Bookings are a bit tricky, because your clients would need to book separately each day they want to stay. You would need to create 13 "services" which would equate to each room and make them bookable "per day" in the "Default duration" when creating the service.
    Hope this helps!
- Sue Waugh
  Copper Contributor
  Jan 04, 2020
  Gabriel_Valdez do you know of a way to allow the customer to book "from" and "to" dates?
  
  I offer pet sitting and would like them to be able to pick dates, not just the drop off day.
  - Gabriel_Valdez
    Former Employee
    Sep 10, 2020
    Hi Sue - Thanks for your question. Sadly, there is no way to do ranges of dates. Your clients would need to select multiple days.

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Microsoft Bookings for small holiday accommodations businesses

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