Below are some of the projects I have been working on with a brief description of the techniques used and the final results. Some are large projects carried out over a series of months, whilst others are projects completed in an afternoon.
If you have a project in mind, I would love to hear from you to see if we can work together.
2021-05-19
Programming a responsive website for a family-run holiday rental business with online reservations and integrated control panel
The goal of this project was to create a web page to present the tourist apartments offered by a small family business. In addition to the basic features, they needed to include the possibility of making reservations directly through the website.
Instead of just including a reservation form, the client opted to include a complete reservation system with price calculation, real-time availability confirmation, editing of reservation terms, minimum stay…, etc.
I programmed a "back-office" - control panel - that allowed the client to manage the apartments offered: They could add descriptions and characteristics to each apartment, and upload a selection of photos of each one.
In addition to this, I programmed a calendar that allowed them to modify prices in real time and adjust them according to high and low seasons as well as key dates such as local holidays.
The panel also allowed them to manage all incoming reservations in the system - viewing the customer's data, the dates of their stay, and their payment method and status.
An incoming reservation automatically reduced the availability of the apartment, so web visitors had up-to-date availability and price information when they went to make a reservation.
Along with this, I designed a simple and modern website that adapted to all mobile and computer screens.
It is clear that a small family-owned website cannot compete directly with the big reservation portals such as Booking.com or AirBNB, but it is also true that nowadays potential clients know that these portals charge high commissions - If you can provide a client with an alternative where they can book directly with you without going through a portal - maybe offering late checkout for example, or a small discount (that you cannot mention on the page so as not to violate the rules imposed by those portals) - you can save 20% commission on each “rescued” reservation.
It doesn't take a lot of arithmetic to see that with just a small quantity of bookings, the cost of setting up this system pays for itself - and from then on, it's all money saved.
