Merchant Services and Vacation Home Owners.....Inevitable, continued

Well, I guess this weekend spilled into this week. Anyway, let’s talk about real-time booking engines. All a real time booking engine does is allow a consumer to "buy" travel using a credit card or debit/check card. The "buyer" will receive a confirmation after the transaction has been processed. This confirmation will include the total cost of the travel package as well as the travel and accommodation dates that have been selected by the buyer of the lodging.

As you might have guessed, Ecommerce real time booking platforms are complicated. Think about developing a system to send the travel buyer to a "booking" page. Next, the buyer needs to check the availability of the property on the desired travel dates using an accurate real time calendar, (Imagine booking the property on a specific date to more than one person!). Next, the customer needs to pay for the transaction over a secure payment gateway, assuming the property unit is available. Incidentally, a payment gateway is an Ecommerce application service provider that allows a merchant to accept credit cards. In fact, it is just like that thing you swipe your credit card through when you pay for gas or groceries. The only difference is that when you go to a gas station or a grocery store the machine that you swipe your card through reads the magnetic strip while the payment gateway requires someone to fill out an online application. The information will then be moved from your computer over a secure network to the merchant service provider. Eventually, the money ends up in your operating account assuming the transaction was "good". "Good" means that the card belonged to the person who used it and that the buyer and seller negotiated the transaction in good faith.

Clearly, the decision to accept credit cards is one that needs to be considered by anyone in the hospitality business. Furthermore, one should consider a real time calendar that interfaces with your merchant service provider. In future we will be covering more topics related to managing and accounting for your rental cash flow. Note, this is a red hot subject and I suspect you will hear much more about it in the months to come.

Please feel free to send any questions or comments to info.homespunwebsites.com.

Thanks,

HomeSpunWebsites