[blog...]

I promised for weeks to some users to release a new version of ab_booking. Only a few seconds ago, I did it!

New revision 0.5.0 is online in TER (TYPO3 Extension Repository) and on forge.typo3.org.

There are some tiny bugfixes and several new features, I am using on my site. Now it's p ossible to make prices depending on the duration of the booking.

For example you could enter rates for a double as follows:

• 1 night: 90 € + 10 € for room cleaning
• 2 nights: 2x90€ but no extra charge room cleaning
• 3 nights: 3x80€
• 7 nights: 7x(90€-20%)

You can achieve this by entering the following code into the price database field:

90,D:3:80,D:7:20%

Read (comma separated):  It costs 90 per night. A discount ("D") is offered after 3 nights and the new price is 80. Another discount ("D") is vallid after 7 days and you pay 90 minus 20%. And so on...

The same with the room cleaning. If you want only an extra charge for people comming one night, you enter in single component:

10,D:2:-1

Read: It costs 10 per stay. A discount ("D") is valid after 2 days and the price is removed (-1). You could of course write as well:

10,D:2:5,D:7:-1

In this case the customers pay 10 for one night, 5 for 2-6 nights and no extra charge for more than 7 nights.

Or you can offer optionally breakfast and the customer may deselect it or not.

7,D:3:10%,O

Read: It costs 7 per person. A discount of 10% is applied after 3 nights. The customer may deselect this option ("O").

With 0.5.0 you may also influence the minimum stay for the customer. E.g. if you like to set a minimum stay of 3 nights for bookings more than 8 weeks in the future you can set:

3,W:8:2,W:1:1 

Read: The minium stay is three nights. 8 weeks before booking start it is reduced to 2 nights. And in the last week before arrival it is set to 1 night.

There is an other view which is quite useful in my case: a check-in overview. Now you can put on an internal page a view with the coming arrivals and depatures for the next 4 days (sorry, not configurable at the moment). And you have a simple calendar field to jump to any date in the past and future!

Now ab_booking is much more flexible but for sure still not flexible enough for everybody. Please feel free to test ab_booking at ab_booking.bigga.de and to install it to your TYPO3 website.