By using the Hotel Booking Notifier add-on, the owner can add different notifications per Accommodation Type and schedule them to be sent in a specific number of days before or after the check-in or check-out dates. This can be useful for sending some information before or after the reservation such as a local guide with a list of attractions, gate code, other rules and instructions, suggestions to leave reviews, or reminders to the cleaning staff or other employees, etc.
Accommodation Notice fields
By installing the plugin you get 2 new fields for each Accommodation Type: Notification fields Notice 1 and Notice 2
You can see them when you edit the Accommodation type using the default editor, under capacity settings. You can add the gate code of the related property, a PDF link with a guide or instructions, or any other custom link, etc. This information can be sent in email by adding new email tags to the email templates:
Notice 1: %accommodation_notice_1%
Notice 2: %accommodation_notice_2%
These email tags can be used in the default email templates and in the notifications added with the Notifier add-on.
Add new Notification
To add a new Notification you should go to Bookings > Notifications > Add New. Here are the available options:
- Title - add a title for you to recognize the notification amongst the rest of the Notifications
- Type - at the moment only Email type is available.
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Trigger - select the number of days, select before/after options, and tie it to the check-in or check-out date. So it can be 7 days before check-in or 2 days after check-out, etc.
You can enable the 'Skip this notification for reservations made later than the set time frame.' option to skip sending the notification if the new reservation passed the trigger. - Accommodations - select the accommodation types this notification should be sent to.
- Recipients - select the recipients this notification should be sent to: Admin, Customer, Custom Email addresses. You can select all the options and add
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Custom Email Addresses - here you can indicate multiple email addresses separated by a comma.. Make sure you check the Custom Email addresses option above.
- Email Template - indicate subject, Header, and compose Message using default and new accommodation notice email tags if needed.
- Test Notification Now - this option allows you to check if the message can be delivered. Note: since some email tags show dynamic information that depends on specific booking details such as booking ID, number of guests, selected services, etc. will be empty. It is rather a dummy email that will let you check how the approximate view of the notification.
Sending Notifications
When you add a notification it will be sent automatically for the bookings you receive in the future. The newly added notification will not be sent for existing bookings. You can do it manually by editing reservations at Bookings > All Bookings. When you edit a specific booking, there is an option to select a notification and send it in the sidebar right under the logs of the booking
The plugin scans all the bookings every 6 hours and sends notifications for the bookings according to the trigger of each reservation you created.
If you wish to customize the schedule you can disable WP Cron on your site and create a cron job on your server:
You can set up a real cron task in your server admin panel: 0 */6 * * * http://mp-themes/ocean/wp-cron.php?action=mphb_cron_send_notifications
The notifications are sent for direct and even imported (if you import bookings from external OTAs like Airbnb) bookings:
Direct Bookings - the notifications are sent for all direct bookings that were added after the creation of the notification even if the trigger date has passed and the following option is not enabled - "Skip this notification for reservations made later than the set time frame."
Imported Bookings - the notification will be sent if the trigger date has not passed yet. For example, if the notification is set to be sent in 7 days before check-in but you get an imported reservation with a check-in date in 6 or fewer days from today then the notification for such imported booking will not be sent. It will send the notification for new imported reservations with the check-in date in 7 or more days from today.
To send the notification to the customer of the imported booking, you need to edit the imported booking and add a customer email to the Email field (Customer Information section) manually.
If you do not want the notification to be sent for the imported bookings you need to go to Accommodation > Settings > Extensions > Notifier and disable the needed options:
- Do not send notifications for imported bookings to Administrator.
- Do not send notifications for imported bookings to Customer.
- Do not send notifications for imported bookings to Custom email addresses.
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