faq - frequently asked questions
What is a booking engine?
A booking engine is where the resort enters rates and allocations. Typically, a potential guest will enter an arrival and departure date on the resort website and then "submit" the information to the booking engine. The booking engine will then confirm the room and take credit card details and finally confirm a transaction.
Will Bitsiren become my webmaster?
Yes - the webmaster role (i.e., adding pages, making updates, etc) is included in the Book Online Asia service. We need control of your website in order to fully optimize it, to make it 100% visible to the search engines.
Why are the search engines so important?
For hotel/resort websites, 60-70% of traffic is coming from the search engines (like Google and Yahoo). This makes the search engines extremely important. This means that websites must be built FOR the search engines.
What is "SEO"?
SEO is Search Engine Optimization - refining/fine-tuning your website so that it is 100% visible to the search engines. If the search engines can "see" your website, they will give you a higher rank.
Is an online credit card transaction secure?
Absolutely - an online transaction is very secure. The online booking engine sits on a secure server. The Book Online Asia secure server uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) for transactions - this is the same encryption technology that banks around the world use. With SSL, information is encrypted before it travels on the world wide web.
What credit cards can guests use for a booking?
Guest can pay the 10% deposit with either Visa or Mastercard. By the end of 2009, we will add Amex, JCB and others.
When and how will my resort get paid?
Travelers around the world are familiar with the 10% deposit to confirm a room. This 10% deposit goes directly to our account (to Bitsiren - Book Online Asia). The guest pays the balance of 90% to the resort upon either arrival or departure (depends on the hotel/resort policy). In other words, the hotel/resort will "process" the balance of 90%.
What if my resort normally charges more than 10%? Or even the full amount?
The more you charge, the higher the drop-out ratio is. The point is to get the guest fully committed to his/her holiday at your hotel/resort. A 10% deposit achieves this. Very few guests will cancel and throw away their 10% deposit. We think 10% is the right number.
And if I insist on collecting a 50% (or more) deposit?
We don't think this is ideal but we can do it. Any deposit we collect in addition to our 10% will of course require reconciling. We can collect the deposit (including the amount incremental to our 10% fee) and then "square-up" with the resort either monthly or quarterly (depending on the volume of transactions).
But importantly, the 10% is a sweet spot: small enough that the guest doesn't worry about it and large enough that the guest is committed.
My resort already sends newsletters - why do we need Book Online Asia to help?
Our newsletters are properly formatted html emails. Our newsletters include tracking tags that allow us to measure the performance of a newsletter along with all other online campaigns. We also will manage your email addresses - remove problems, add new guests, group into categories (i.e., guests, agents, media).
Why do we do it? Because newsletters work! We think newsletters bring in business ESPECIALLY when they highlight new and compelling special offers (last minute deals or packages).
