Booking Engine

1. Accessing the Booking Engine

You can reach the Hostel Mate Booking Engine in one of two ways:

• Direct link – Click Booking Engine in the sidebar or visit https://app.hostelmate.co/waitlist-website.

• Dashboard shortcut – From the main Dashboard, choose Other → Booking Engine.

Either path lands you on the same, real-time booking page your guests see—handy for test reservations or quick checks.

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2. Troubleshooting & Issues

Before you start taking payments, glance at the issues section at the top of the Booking Engine page. If everything’s good to go, you won’t see anything here. Otherwise, you might encounter the following:

• No payment gateway enabled By default you have the option to accept bookings without payment, but they will be moved to the Waiting list, If you want to add stripe, Go to Finance Portal , provider your Stripe API key, and follow the setup steps here .

• Missing room images Guests may hesitate to book if they can’t see what they’re getting. Navigate to Rooms , select the room with missing images, upload one or more photos, and save the changes.

After fixing any of these, simply refresh the page. The issue banner will disappear once resolved.

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3. Incomplete Booking Attempts

Whenever a guest fills in their information but fails to complete the payment, their booking attempt is logged. This section helps you follow up manually if needed, especially helpful when a guest might’ve had card trouble or got distracted mid-checkout.

Each record includes the guest’s:

• Name

• Email

• Phone number

• Booking date

• Total amount attempted

• Room number

• Time of attempt

These records are updated in real time and are automatically cleared if the guest later completes payment. Any entry older than 30 days is archived automatically to keep the list manageable.

Here’s an updated version of your Booking Engine documentation with a new section on embedding the Booking Engine into your website, including options, parameters, and API info:

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4. Embedding the Booking Engine in Your Website

You can integrate the Hostel Mate Booking Engine into your own website in one of three ways:

A. Redirect Link

Send users directly to your customized booking page:

https://book.hostelmate.co/?pid={propertyId}&CheckIn={checkInDate}&CheckOut={checkOutDate}

Replace the CheckIn and CheckOut values dynamically based on user input to pre-fill dates for guests.

Supported URL Parameters

Parameter	Description
pid	Your property ID. Required for the booking engine to fetch room data.
CheckIn	(Optional) Pre-selects the guest's check-in date (format: YYYY-MM-DD).
CheckOut	(Optional) Pre-selects the guest's check-out date (format: YYYY-MM-DD).

More URL parameters coming soon, including:

• Color and theme customization

• Room filtering based on tags, categories, or availability

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B. Embed via Iframe

To keep users on your site, you can embed the booking page using an iframe:

<iframe 
  src="https://book.hostelmate.co/?pid={propertyId}" 
  width="100%" 
  height="800" 
  frameborder="0" 
  allowfullscreen>
</iframe>

This lets users search and book rooms directly from your site without needing to redirect.

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C. Use the Availability API

If you want to build a fully custom booking experience on your frontend, you can fetch room availability directly via the public API.

Endpoint

POST https://api.hostelmate.co/api/v1/get-new-avilablilty

Example curl Request

curl "https://api.hostelmate.co/api/v1/get-new-avilablilty" \
  -H "accept: application/json, text/plain, */*" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -H "origin: https://book.hostelmate.co" \
  --data-raw '{
    "dates": ["{date}"],
    "property": "{propertyId}"
  }'

Request Payload

Field	Type	Description
dates	array	Dates to check availability for (format: YYYY-MM-DD).
property	string	Your property ID (UUID).

Response

The API will return available rooms, rates, and related availability info for the specified date(s).