Three kinds of booking
Hospitality is not one booking problem but three. A restaurant books a table for a party size at a time. Accommodation books a room or a pitch for a date range, and the availability has to match what Booking.com and Airbnb are showing at the same moment. An experience books a slot with capacity and a per-person price. No single system does all three well, so the choice starts with which business you are. Here is how the common ones compare on what a website needs from them.
Restaurants and cafés
OpenTable (global). Embeddable reservation widget, hosted page, and the OpenTable network, which brings diners and charges per cover for the ones it sends. Bookings through the widget on your own site are cheaper than network bookings, which is the whole argument for having the widget on your site. Deposits and card capture for no-shows, waitlist, guest notes. Watch: network fees add up; the widget's styling is limited.
ResDiary (UK origin, international). Flat monthly subscription with no per-cover commission, an embeddable widget, table management, deposits and pre-orders, a voucher module. Watch: less diner discovery than OpenTable; you bring the traffic.
SevenRooms. Reservations plus a guest CRM, marketing automation and event ticketing. Aimed at groups and high-end venues. Watch: price and setup for an independent.
Tock. Built for prepaid experiences: tasting menus, chef's tables, supper clubs, sold as tickets with deposits. Watch: less natural for a walk-in bistro.
Quandoo. European marketplace and widget with per-cover fees, similar in shape to OpenTable.
For a restaurant with reservations or a café with weekend brunch, ResDiary and OpenTable are the usual pair to compare; Tock if you sell ticketed dinners.
Accommodation
SiteMinder. Channel manager and booking engine for hotels and larger properties, syncing rates and availability to the marketplaces and taking direct bookings on your site, with a rate comparison widget. Little Hotelier is the same company's product for small properties. Watch: more than a single holiday let needs.
Lodgify. Booking engine and channel manager for holiday lets and self-catering, syncing with Airbnb and Vrbo, with a calendar you embed on your own site. Watch: the built-in website templates are basic; embed the engine in a proper site instead.
Beds24. Affordable, flexible channel manager and booking engine used by B&Bs, hostels, glamping and holiday lets. Watch: setup takes patience.
Others: Little Hotelier, Freetobook and eviivo for B&Bs; Hostaway, Uplisting and Smoobu for holiday lets; Cloudbeds and Sirvoy for hostels; Mews and Cloudbeds for boutique hotels; Anytime Booking and Newbook for campsites.
The test for any of them: can the guest see the same availability on your site as on the marketplace, and book it there at an equal or better price.
Experiences
FareHarbor. Free to the operator; the guest pays a booking fee at checkout. Slots with capacity, per-person and per-group pricing, waivers, gift cards, and channel connections to the tour marketplaces. Widely used by tour operators, boat charters and activity centres. Watch: the guest-paid fee shows in your checkout; be upfront about it.
Bookeo. Flat subscription, no commission. Appointments, classes and tours, with the escape room mode many venues use: rooms by time slot, player counts, vouchers. Watch: the widget's look needs care to fit a designed site.
Others: Rezdy and Bokun for tours with marketplace channels; Xola and ROLLER for activity centres; Resova and Buzzshot for escape rooms; Nexudus, OfficeRnD and Skedda for coworking spaces.
What the website needs from any of them
- A Book button on every page, one tap to the engine with the room, table or experience pre-selected.
- Live availability on your site, embedded, not a link to a marketplace.
- Inclusive prices stated on the page and matching the engine, so the checkout total is the number the guest saw.
- Deposits or card capture with the cancellation policy stated beside the button.
- Vouchers sold through the engine or a voucher module, redeemable in booking.
- Confirmation messages that carry directions, parking, check-in or arrival time and what to bring.
- Tested on a phone, including the in-app browsers Instagram and Google Maps open, because that is where guests arrive from.
- Tracking of booking clicks and completed bookings by page.
Choosing
- Restaurant or café, want to stop paying per cover: ResDiary, with OpenTable if you also want its network.
- Ticketed dinners and tastings: Tock.
- Single holiday let or a few: Lodgify, Smoobu or Beds24.
- B&B or small inn: Little Hotelier, Freetobook or Beds24.
- Hotel: SiteMinder, Mews or Cloudbeds.
- Tours, charters, activities: FareHarbor or Rezdy.
- Escape room: Bookeo, Resova or Buzzshot.
Already on one that works and syncs? Stay. The website can make any of them take the direct booking; switching engines mid-season is a project.
Where this sits
Embedding whichever engine a hospitality business runs, with live availability on the site, inclusive prices matching the engine and every Book button tracked, is the core of what we build into a hospitality business website. The engine holds the diary; the website's job is to get the guest into it in one tap, on your domain, without the commission.