Is WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings Good for Hotel Websites? Pros & Cons
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There may be many ways you discovered the WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings plugin. You love using WooCommerce, you purchased one of the popular hotel WordPress themes with this plugin included, or you simply stumbled upon this solution while searching for a WordPress vacation rental booking plugin.
Since it’s super important to choose the right booking system for hotels so that it meets all your everyday needs, we’re going to take a closer look at how WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings operates, its pros and cons.
What Is WooCommerce Bookings and Accommodation Bookings?
The WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings plugin is an extension of WooCommerce Bookings.
This means the WooCommerce Bookings plugin is also required to use the WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings add-on. Luckily, the add-on is free. That’s why your start-up expenses will include the core plugin only ($249, 1-year plan).
This extension is designed for integrating a full cycle of the booking procedures into any accommodation or hotel site, including check-in and check-out dates selection, real-time availability, flexible special rates, and instant accommodation booking.
It is widely used as a standalone booking solution by hotel sites (meaning, you use it on your favorite theme) and is often packed in hotel WordPress themes as a default booking engine. For example, one of the top-selling WordPress themes, CozyStay, is powered largely by this extension.
Actually, almost all of the powerful features you will need for accepting hotel bookings on your site come with the WooCommerce Bookings plugin. The Accommodation Bookings add-on, in its turn, adds more accommodation-specific features, e.g. rates for overnight stays or the ability to calculate special rates for a specific range of dates. So, you’ll be extensively working with two plugins.
To sum up this part, to use this plugin, you need to have the following plugins on your WordPress:
- WooCommerce 6.0 or higher.
- WooCommerce Bookings 1.15.0 or higher.
- WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings extension.
WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings
Top Benefits of Using WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings
What are the key features of the WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings plugin and how do they work?
We’ve already briefly mentioned that it comes with some of the top-needed features for hotels and booking processes. But here are a few more pros – and basically reasons why this WooCommerce extension is one of the top choices for the hospitality business.
Full WordPress and WooCommerce integration
As a native WooCommerce add-on, it delivers many benefits of WooCommerce itself.
- Native integration with WooCommerce.
- Use of existing payment gateways without add-ons.
- Customization options with themes and plugins.
Cost-effective for small hotels
It’s always a win-win to go with WordPress compared to proprietary booking software.
- A fixed yearly cost.
- No commission fees compared to non-WordPress software.
- No commission fees compared to platforms like Airbnb.
Useful features for hotels
As a separate extension for accommodation, it’s designed to meet your needs as a business with purpose-built features.
- Handy interface for customizing booking rules.
- Real-time availability.
- Different per-day rates.
- Settings costs per person/by person type.
- Setting costs for resources.
Powerful tools of WooCommerce Bookings
As we’ve already highlighted, look for features of the WooCommerce Bookings plugin itself when assessing its Accommodation Bookings add-on. Most powerful tools come from there!
- Set property availability rules based on specific dates, time slots, or custom ranges.
- Extra tools for businesses other than hotels or appointments, e.g. equipment rental.
- Multi-vendor capabilities through a separate add-on – multiple properties and owners, scaling, and more bookings are quite possible by connecting this add-on ($119/year).
- Different types of people with different costs (e.g. children or adults).
- Manually add bookings when a guest calls your property.
- Coupons for per-person discounts.
- WooCommerce bookings availability.
- Bookings work for any WooCommerce payment gateways.
- Charge deposit.
- Customers can book ‘days’ or ‘nights’.
Cons of Using WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings
While it may be a great tool for many hotel websites, some limitations of the WooCommerce Accommodation Booking plugin are significant enough to drive users to seek alternatives.
The top one usually reported by various theme users includes no support for iCal. In the context of the hotel business, this means you can’t sync bookings from your WordPress site to external channels (e.g. HomeAway).
Next, we can highlight the lack of some specific features. The design capabilities for websites also leave much to be desired. But let’s describe in greater detail why these WooCommerce Accommodation Booking cons matter a lot.
1. No built-in iCal or OTA sync
Without iCal, you are limited to direct site bookings only – or have to keep an eye on all your channels 24/7 manually. The first scenario might not be sustainable enough for the entire business. The second one can cost you a lot of overbooking and frustrated clients.
- No direct Airbnb, Booking.com, or Expedia synchronization.
- Risk of double bookings and manual work.
- The need to search for workarounds via third-party plugins with limited automation.
2. Limited or paid hotel-specific features
Yes, it has many features for hotels – but far from all you need. Some of them come as extra paid extensions. Normally, those features that are paid in WooCommerce itself, are also not included in the Accommodation Bookings add-on.
- No native support for room inventory management.
- No seasonal pricing adjustments.
- No automatic upsell of hotel services.
- Many paid features that you absolutely need, e.g. Deposits, or free ones you need to install an extra plugin for, e.g. Taxes.
- No mobile app for managing bookings on the go.
3. Limited design capabilities
By default, WordPress plugins may not perfectly deal with design, that is, they don’t look that well until you apply some magic (via user-friendly tools or CSS). Many plugin providers solve this ‘issue’ by applying custom design to the default plugin content (no 100% guarantee it will look good in your theme), or by shipping the entire business-specific themes with fully consistent design. The WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings plugin takes the first approach, so you might always need to search for workarounds to create a design that you need.
4. Common challenges with WooCommerce Accommodation Booking
You need to always update room availability manually if you want to use several booking platforms at the same time. So there are many potential errors without automation. There is also a lack of mobile-friendly booking flow, which might be off-putting for many hotel owners. Another point to highlight is that WooCommerce support is plugin-focused, not hotel business-oriented. Reliance on forums and third-party developers is also very common.
Alternatives to WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings for Hotels
Luckily, there are enough solutions and WooCommerce hotel booking alternatives you can consider to find the most effective one for your business.
Dedicated Hotel Booking plugins
A more business-oriented solution optimized for vacation rentals and STR/hotel businesses, yet with full support for WooCommerce, is plugins like MotoPress Hotel Booking. Used by thousands of websites, it creates a convenient and smooth booking experience for your clients.
- iCal sync to get bookings from multiple OTA channels and sync them automatically.
- Seasonal pricing, extra guest pricing, per-length-of-stay pricing.
- Room management.
- Many payment gateways + the option to use WooCommerce via the extra add-on.
- Powerful booking forms and availability calendars.
- A selection of premium and free hotel websites or holiday home designs.
- A free mobile app to view bookings, guests, and payments.
- Automated and manual booking confirmations.
You may even start for free with this hotel website tutorial.
SaaS-Based Booking Solutions
It’s no secret that you can connect cloud-based tools (non-WordPress) to add booking capabilities to your site. How do they compare to plugins? Normally, they have more polished dashboards and even more features every hotel site needs. But they also cost much more.
Solutions like BNBForms, Cloudbeds or Little Hotelier can help you get started and get maximum features for the hotel and vacation rental management operations: integrated channel managers for multi-platform sync, well-designed booking forms, and advanced pricing systems.
Custom WordPress Development
If you don’t want to get your hands dirty and are ready to pay for the time and skills of others, consider a fully customized solution. Custom WordPress website development companies may be more beneficial for your scenario.
Final Verdict: Is WooCommerce Booking Enough for Hotels?
To sum up our points and observations, here are the final takeaways when it comes to using WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings.
Key points:
- WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings is a great free extension to the premium WooCommerce Bookings plugin, which comes with features optimized for hotel business.
- While offering powerful tools for hotel bookings, availability management, price variations, and payment gateways, there are limitations in support, channel manager options, and design.
- WooCommerce Bookings can be used for building hotel chains or vacation rental/property management platforms (multi-vendor).
Best use cases for WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings:
Small hotels, boutique stays, and vacation rentals who need to implement direct bookings on WordPress, avoiding OTAs (online travel agencies like Booking.com). Websites that already heavily rely on WooCommerce and don’t have unique requirements for hotel management.
Who should look for alternatives?
- If syncing to OTAs and avoiding overbooking is crucial for you.
- When you are looking for out-of-the-box design variations.
- You find more hotel business-specific features highly important (e.g. collect payments automatically before client’s arrival).
- You prefer dedicated support teams with hospitality industry knowledge or even want the plugin to be installed and pre-configured for you.
- You want to manage bookings on your phone via the app.
WordPress alternative SaaS alternative
Have you used WooCommerce for hotel bookings? Share your thoughts with us.
WooCommerce Hotel Booking FAQ
Can I get WooCommerce Booking plugin free of charge?
Does WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings have a channel manager?
What is the best WooCommerce Accommodation Bookings alternative?
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