How to set up your booking engine

This article is the practical setup walk-through. Open Settings → Booking Engine and follow the tabs in order — they're already arranged in roughly the order you'll touch them on a fresh property. The first three tabs (Appearance, Contact & Footer, Language) are content; the next two (Payment Methods, Best Price Guarantee) are integrations; and the Widget Code Generator at the end is how you embed it on your marketing site.

Before you start

Make sure these are in place — they're prerequisites the booking engine reads from but doesn't let you edit:

• Property profile — Settings → Property must have name, address, contact email and phone filled in. These are used as the fallback display name and contact details.
• Active room types and rate plans — without these, guests will see an empty booking engine. Cover this in the Backoffice articles on room types and rates.
• At least one active payment method of base type Cash, Card, or Bank in Settings → Payment Methods. Without this you can't enable any payment option in the engine.

1. Appearance

This tab is where 80% of your branding work happens. Don't overthink the rest — get this right and the engine looks like yours.

• Hotel title override — leave empty unless you want a marketing-style title different from the property name.
• Font family — pick from 16 web-safe options (Inter, Roboto, Playfair, Georgia, etc.). A live preview appears beneath the dropdown.
• Header color — the top bar background. Most properties go with white or a very light tint of their brand color.
• Button color — your primary action color. Used on Search, Reserve, and confirmation buttons. Make it your strongest brand color.
• Border radius (px) — 0 = square, 8 = default, 30 = pill-shaped. Match it to your marketing site's design system if you have one.
• Body background color — applies to pages where the hero image isn't the dominant element (e.g. the room-details page, checkout).
• Logo — overrides the property logo from Settings → Property. SVG strongly preferred. If empty, the property logo is used.
• Background image — the hero image behind the search box on the landing page. A high-resolution exterior or amenity photo. The engine adds a dark gradient overlay so text stays readable; pick a photo that won't clash with that overlay.

The Display Options card lets you toggle the hotel title, the property address, and a cancellation summary on the search results. The Quick Links card has a shortcut to manage Promo Codes.

2. Contact & Footer

Contact email and phone are shown to guests during checkout — typically your reservations or front desk line. Leave empty to use the property defaults. The About Us text shows on the booking engine info area; keep it short (2-3 sentences). The Footer toggle and text control the bottom of every page.

3. Language

Pick the default language and tick the languages you want available in the switcher. Supported: English, Albanian (Shqip), Italian, Norwegian, German, French. Show flags is on by default — country flags in the language switcher are visually clearer than two-letter codes for non-tech-savvy guests.

4. Payment Methods

Tick which active payment methods to offer at checkout. Only Cash, Card, and Bank base types appear in this list. Common combinations:

• Pay-on-arrival only — tick "Pay at hotel (cash)" and "Pay at hotel (card)". The reservation is held without an upfront charge.
• Bank transfer pre-payment — tick the bank-transfer method that points to your IBAN. Guests get IBAN and reference at checkout. Reservation is held; you confirm manually when the transfer arrives.
• Online card processing — tick a card method that's marked Default for Stripe. Requires HotelBee Payments connected. Guests pay live with Visa, Mastercard, Amex; deposit settles into your Stripe balance and pays out to your bank automatically.

5. Best Price Guarantee

Pick which OTA channels (out of those connected via Channex) the engine should compare against and display in the price-comparison badge. If you leave the selection empty, all connected channels appear. Leave it empty unless you've connected several niche or regional OTAs that would clutter the comparison — most properties want to show the big names (Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb).

Save and verify

Hit Save (bottom-right of the page). Then click the booking engine link at the top of the page to open the live engine in a new tab and run through one search end to end — date pick, room selection, guest details, payment selection. Stop before actually booking. If anything looks off, come back to the tab in question and tweak. Save again and re-verify.

Optional: embed the engine on your marketing site

Open the Widget Code Generator tab. Pick a widget type:

• Search Banner — a script tag that renders an inline date/guest picker. Light, fast, and best for the homepage. Customize layout (horizontal or vertical), background color, and button color. Search opens the full engine in a new tab.
• Full Booking Flow — an iframe that loads the entire booking flow inside your page. Pre-set check-in date, check-out date, adults, children if you want. Default height is 900px; override if your container needs a different size.

Copy the generated code and paste it into your marketing site's HTML. The script-tag widget can go anywhere; the iframe should be the main content of your /book or /reservations page. Re-test in incognito to make sure the cache isn't lying to you.