Articles/Blog – Online Event Booking Engine and Ticketing System

Tourism Centres & Tourist Activities: Take bookings from your WordPress Blog 24×7

If you are reading this then you are already aware of how important it is for a tourism business or activity centre to have an effective online presence. That includes an informative website and also a presence on social media to engage with customers and potential customers and to route them to your website. You appreciate that tourists and customers are highly likely to visit your website before they come to your tourism centre or activity.

Assuming your website effectively sells what it is you are offering, your website visitor could very well be in the frame of mind to make a booking. You need to ensure that they can do that at that moment. Don’t require them to make a phone call during office hours and call out credit card details unsecurely or to wait for e-mail exchanges. Wouldn’t it be far easier for them and for you if they could place a booking and pay for it securely there and then? So how can you achieve that?

With Booking Craft by Vendexo, you can easily add a booking engine onto any website including WordPress in a matter of minutes. This booking engine enables you to set up your events, to specify what the ticket options and prices are, and what the upper limit should be, if any, in terms of number of attendees per session. You can also set up various ways for your customers to pay you when they make their booking, including PayPal, Stripe (credit & debit cards), Realex Payments (payment cards), gift vouchers, bank transfer etc.

Imagine you have a page on your site describing what you have to offer. You simply copy a short piece of code from the Booking Craft control panel and paste it into your web page where you want the booking form to appear. When the page is next viewed, this code snippet will show details, pictures and a booking form for your events such as the one below:

Event Booking Widget Part 1

The links will open a tabbed display to show more detals, images and a booking form:

Event Booking Widget Part 2

The information and booking form is shown in a device-responsive way, so it will appear nicely and be easy to use whether your visitor is using a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone. The customer can only choose a date when the event is offered and which has sufficient places remaining.

The customer is prompted to choose their ticket types and to enter their contact details:

Event Booking Widget Part 3

And then to choose a method of payment, pay with the selected method and that completes the booking:

Event booking widget part 4 (Payment method choice)

The customer will be then be immediately sent a confirmation e-mail, and you will also be sent an e-mail to let you know of the booking.

Why not incorporate this booking engine onto your website or WordPress blog? It’s not difficult, and it’s not expensive. Contact us for more details, or try it out for free.

Ireland’s €2,500 Online Trading Voucher Scheme Deadline mid-May

If your event/tourism business in in Ireland and you don’t already have the capability to accept bookings or sell tickets online, then you might be interested in the Online Trading Voucher scheme. This is effectively a grant of up to €2,500 in value (or 50% of eligible expenditure, whichever is the lesser) aimed at improving the e-commerce capability of Irish businesses. It is being administered by the Local Enterprise Offices.

There are rules about what businesses are eligible to apply and what the vouchers can and cannot be spent on Online Trading Voucher Scheme.

Two things to say about this:

If you want to apply for this grant, you need to use the above links to find your Local Enterprise Office (LEO) and find out when their application deadline is. We have seen dates around 12th and 15th of May, so there is not a lot of time.
The Booking Craft Online Event Booking Engine and Ticketing System is the type of system which this Online Voucher Scheme would cover. So contact us without delay if you want to set up or improve your business’s online/digital capability in this area. We feel we must point out, however, that the cost of setting up Booking Craft for your event/tourism business is so low that you probably wouldn’t bother applying for the Online Trading Voucher if all you want to do is add it on to your existing website.

Craft Beer Only – Be Different, Be Focused!

craft-beer
One pub owner has taken a brave decision: To open a pub so different to all the others in three big ways:

It will sell only craft beers
No TV screens
No live music

The Beer Market in High Street, Dublin (near Christ Church Cathedral) will open next week. It will be the first pub of its kind in Ireland. It is almost unheard of for pubs not to stock the beers and stouts of the major brewing companies. It is clear that this particular pub is focusing on the growing interest in, and demand for, Craft Beers.

As reported in The Irish Times, The Beer Market pub is owned by Galway Bay Brewery which has ten other pubs in Dublin and Galway. These other pubs also sell craft beers, but together with the beers and stouts of the giant brewing concerns. They obviously feel that the demand for craft beers has reached a level where they can open a pub selling only such beers. It is not the first controversial decision this business has taken. When it opened its Against the Grain pub in 2010, it was one of the first in Dublin not to sell Guinness. So they have some form in the pro-craft beer niche.

Of course there are so many craft beers (in comparison to the number of leading brands) that it is impossible to have a branded tap in the bar for all of them. Bar counter space simply wouldn’t allow it. Instead, the plan is to use numbered taps, with craft beers being rotated. This will also encourage customers to come back again another day to sample more craft beer types.

This is definitely good news for the small craft brewers. In business, the small player struggles in a marketplace dominated by the well-established corporations who have massive marketing and advertising budgets and a huge market share. I always shout “Hurray” when the small player gets a win. It’s classic David versus Golliath. It offers a great channel to market, a market of craft beer drinkers.

It will be very interesting to see if this focus will serve both as a means of market differentiation and attracting locals and visiting tourists interested in craft beers to their doors. Specialization is a way for any business to stand out in a busy marketplace. We wish them well.

Accept Online Bookings for your Events, Tours, Attractions & Activities Affordably & From Mobile Devices

Holiday Planning

Internet Bookings

The Internet is now how people plan their holidays. They use it to research destinations, activities, tours, accommodation, places to eat, entertainment etc. If you operate in the event or tourism space, then you need to have a strong Internet presence. You need to have a website describing what you offer, with lots of convincing copy, attractive images and some videos. In addition you need to be able to take bookings online 24×7, so that visitors can make and pay for bookings while on your website. Your website and booking form have to look good and be usable to visitors using desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices (smart-phones). If visitors find your website too slow or difficult to use, they will simply go elsewhere. There is plenty of choice for them.

Online Booking System

You know how difficult and expensive it can be to get new business, so when a visitor comes to your website when planning their holiday, they are, as some would call it, a hot prospect. You need to do all that you can to show them what they need to see in order to become a customer, that is, to make a booking with you. If all you offer in the way of booking is an e-mail address, phone number or contact form, then you are not doing all you can to close the deal. If the customer wants to tick the box on their trip planning sheet “book tour” and they can’t complete it fully when they want to, which could be very late at night, they can simply go to a different tour company’s website and do it. The good news is that with the Booking Craft online booking engine and ticketing system, you can easily accept bookings on your website. In fact you can turn almost any web page into a booking engine for your activities, tours, events etc.

Don’t fall down on this hurdle. Get the Booking Craft online booking engine and ticketing system working for you. It is not expensive, it is easy to configure and even easier for your visitors to use to place and pay for a booking. For more see www.bookingcraft.com.