A booking engine is what lets a customer choose equipment, dates and size on your website and leave the booking made (and paid, if you want) at eleven at night, without calling you. For a rental shop, it's the difference between meeting demand on a snowy Saturday and losing someone who couldn't get hold of you.
What a booking engine for rentals needs to have
- Real availability by size and by day. A form won't do: it has to know you have two pairs of size 42 boots left on Friday.
- Prices by number of days, with discounts for longer rentals and, if you use them, seasonal prices.
- Extras: helmet, clothing, insurance, lessons, pick-up.
- Payment online or in the shop, and a card pre-authorised deposit if you ask for one.
- Multiple languages: many of your customers are tourists.
- Automatic notifications: confirmation to the customer, a notice to the shop and a reminder before pick-up.
Where the fine print of "free" usually hides
- A free trial that turns into a fee. Many are free for 14 or 30 days and then charge every month, whether you rent anything or not.
- Commission on all your bookings, including the ones you would have had anyway.
- Limits on products, bookings per month or users.
What Caranva's is like
Caranva's booking engine is free with no monthly fee: you add it to your website (it works with WordPress, Wix, Shopify or a custom-built site) and the bookings that come in through your website are 100% yours. If you take payment online, the payment gateway applies its usual per-transaction fee; Caranva adds nothing.
Where we do charge is on what you wouldn't have without us: the bookings that reach you from the marketplace and from Google, from customers who didn't know you. There we keep 15%, and if no bookings come in one month, you pay nothing. All the details, with a worked example in euros, in how a shop gets paid with Caranva.
It includes availability by size, extras, deposits, contracts signed online and automatic notifications. It's all explained in online booking engine and payments and deposits.
What's already happening with shops that use it
- We have generated more than €112,000 for one of our rental shops, and €92,000 for another.
- On average, we generate €34,000 for each shop that works with us.
Do you run a rental shop or school? Send me your rates (a photo of your price list is fine) at caranvasports@gmail.com and I'll have it set up for you in 48 hours, with no monthly fee: just 15% of the bookings we bring you. More at caranva.app/para-tiendas.
— Jaime, founder of Caranva
