Creating a Guesty Booking Engine (Booking Website for Lite users)

Follow the steps below or watch our video to create a Booking Engine.

Step by step:

1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
2. In the top navigation bar, click Growth, then select Distribution.
3. Click the Guesty Booking Engine thumbnail.
4. If you haven’t created a Booking Engine before, click Create your first Booking Engine on the main screen. Otherwise, click Create a new Booking Engine at the top right of the dashboard.
5. In the “General settings” page, follow the on-screen instructions to add your business information to the relevant fields.
   • When adding your Booking Engine domain, fill in the desired name in the textbox before “.guestybookings.com”.  If the domain isn’t available, you’ll see a notification.
   • xxxx.guestybookings.com will be your default domain. You can change it to a custom domain address in the "Optional settings" section.
6. In the “Select properties” page, select the properties you want to include in the Booking Engine.
7. In the “Booking settings” page, under “Select how guests book”, click either Request to book or Instant. Learn more about these two options.
   

   Instant booking

   In case you want bookings made via the Booking Engine to receive immediate approval, select “Instant”. When a reservation is created, its status will automatically be set to “Confirmed” and the relevant dates will be blocked in the calendar. This option requires that you collect guests’ payments at booking. You must connect a payment processor to Guesty in order to collect guests' credit card details.

   Beta users: Select how guests can pay for instant booking:
   • Credit card: Guests can only book reservations by paying with a credit card. You must connect a payment processor in Guesty. Once a reservation is made, its status will instantly change to "Confirmed". The payment processing is done separately and does not affect the reservation's confirmed status. 
   • Manual bank transfer (or payment apps): Guests can only book reservations by paying you directly via bank transfer or with a 3rd-party payment app. You will need to collect your payments manually, send your guests manual payment instructions, and track down each payment. If you choose this option, the reservation status will automatically be set to “Confirmed”. The reservation payment status will be set to “Payment failed” immediately upon confirmation, as Guesty is not able to record these payments. When a guest makes a reservation via bank transfer, a notification will appear on the notifications page, under the "Payments" tab. We recommend manually updating the status of a paid reservation to “Fully paid” in Guesty.
   • Credit card and manual bank transfer: Guests can pay by either credit card or a bank transfer when they book.

     Note:

     If you’re using automated messages, note there is no way in Guesty to differentiate between reservations paid via bank transfer to those paid via credit card. Thus, you cannot set a specific message for each payment type. We recommend addressing both types of payment in the content of your automatic messages.

   Request to book

   If selecting “Request to book”, the reservation status will be set to “Reserved” upon creation. When receiving a “Reserved” reservation, you need to set its status manually to “Confirmed” or "Closed". You can choose how a booked reservation will affect the calendar before it is confirmed, either by blocking the calendar (without an end restriction), blocking the calendar for 24 hours only, or not blocking the calendar. Select the relevant option from the “Affect on calendar” dropdown.

8. Under "Booking confirmation page", choose which confirmation page will be displayed to the guest after making a booking, by selecting either “Use Guesty’s template” or “Use your own template”. If you choose to use your own template, fill in the title and body of the message, and add an image. If you're allowing both payments by credit card and bank transfer, you can create dedicated templates for each payment type.
9. Under "Search bar and filter settings (booking widget)", define which features guests can use to customize their search via the Booking Engine.

   Beta users: You can allow guests to filter by the tags you added to your properties. Use indicative tag names that guests easily identify before activating this filter.

10. In the “Company policy” page, select either Guesty’s Privacy & Cookie Policy template or use your own. Also, choose whether to use Guesty’s Terms & Conditions template or your own. Mark the “I read..” checkboxes if using Guesty’s documents. If you're using your own policy versions, fill in the title and body of the template
11. In the “Design” optional page, follow the instructions to set your homepage image, color theme, and Favicon logo. See our recommendations for uploading photos.
12. In the “Contact us” optional page, add your contact information (phone number, social profiles, and contact us form). 
13. In the “Web analytics” optional page, you can connect your Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Facebook Pixel ID accounts.
14. Pilot users: In the "Languages" optional page, you can set the languages in which your Booking Engine can appear. The default language of the Booking Engine will be set to English. Learn more about adding additional languages to the Booking Engine.
15. Click Create Booking Engine.
16. A pop-up message will appear, indicating that your Booking Engine is ready. Click either Continue to create a Guesty Website, or Go to the Booking Engine dashboard where you can preview your Booking Engine, change its settings, or delete it. To learn more about Guesty Websites, click here.