Can my Mobile viewers experience the Booking Engine optimized for a mobile device?

The BookingCenter Booking Engine automatically adjusts to a mobile browser such as an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. You do not need to do any extra coding - just experience your 'Book Now' features on a mobile device to test the formatting and layout.

To test what this looks like from your Desktop browser (i.e. 'faking' a mobile device), you can click this URL : http://requests.bookingcenter.com/enquiry_mobi.php?site=BCDEMO to make a test booking.


There are a few issues to be aware of re: the Mobile Booking Engine:

1) The Agent Allocation features that give specific rates and availability to defined agentsmust be explicity adressed in Mobile Booking Engine.You need to use the explicit URL for the mobile engine on your mobile site as: http://requests.bookingcenter.com/enquiry_mobi.php?site=DEMO&agent=MYAGENT

The above example is for a Site called 'DEMO' desiring a query for the agent 'MYAGENT' to use a mobile device to get a rate and availability query unique to that Agent. Note the two different applications passing along of the Agent URL from enquiry.phtml?site=DEMO&agent=MYAGENT (what is used for a standard desktop browser) to enquiry_mobi.php?site=DEMO&agent=MYAGENT (what is used for the .mobile version)

Thus, when you desire to allocate to Agents to their mobile devices, make sure the person who codes your mobile website uses the explicit URL when building the link from your .mob website to the desired allocation to agent. For more help understanding Agent Allocations, see: https://support.bookingcenter.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/List/Index/11/allocation-to-agent-channels

2) Selling Items online.  The Mobile Booking Engine does not support selling 'Items' online.  The reason is that testing has shown that selling 'up-sell' items via a mobile interface can sometimes inhibit a room sale (it presents too many required choices). Thus, at this time the ability to sell Items is for the desktop browser Booking Engine only. However, this doesn't prevent a property from selling Package rates to their mobile users, as packages (comprised of Rates + Items) are supported via the Mobile Booking Engine.

3) Getting the mobile version to automatically load for a mobile device. Becasue we use the client browser's HTTP header to designate a 'mobile' viewer from a 'desktop' viewer, this header information must be set to deliver the enquiry_mobi.php? version of the Booking Engine for a mobile device. When a developer places the Booking Engine into an iFrame or calls it via an API, it is imperative the call makes explicit the URL string for enquiry_mobi.php?site=xxx (see the Booking Engine API for details)  in order to inform the Booking Egine that the client is a mobile device.  There are numerous ways to do this, and any competent web developer should be able to do this.