After reading this article, you will be able to know how to sell vacation rental using WooCommerce Booking and Appointment Plugin that focuses on fixed booking periods.
Step 1
You must create your rentals as a new product in WooCommerce by clicking Products then Add Product link. The Booking meta box allows you to setup your rental home which can be found on the same page. Based on the screenshot, the booking date and multiple day booking options were enabled in order for the user to select a start date and an end date. The Lockout date after X orders option is set to 1 which means once the house is booked by a customer, those dates will unavailable for further bookings until that customer checks out.
Step 2
The WooCommerce Booking and Appointment Plugin allows you to specify the number of hours in the Advance Booking Period field under the Bookable Time Period tab. On the screenshot, it was set to 24 hours which means booking can be done only 24 hours prior to the start date or checkin.
The Number of Dates to choose will determine the maximum number of days from today which you want to allow booking for. It was set to 365 days which means the calendar will have dates for a year from today to choose from.
Step 3
Check the Enable Fixed Block Booking option under the Fixed Block Booking tab to setup vacation rentals of fixed booking periods. This tab allows you to create multiple bookable blocks of varying periods. Click on Add New Booking Block button to add a new block where you will be able to create only one block at a time and save it. By saving, it will show the block details right below in the Booking Blocks table.
On the screenshot, two fixed blocks were created, one for weekends and another for weekdays. In the Start Day and End day fields, there is an option called Any Days. You can select a specific weekday on which you want your block booking to start or you can choose Any Days so that your booking can begin on any weekday. The end date or checkout date shall be populated based on the Number of days for that block. Weekdays booking can be done from Monday to Wednesday and Thursday as checkout day. Weekend booking can be done from Friday to Saturday and Sunday as checkout day. The Weekdays and Weekends vacation rental booking costs £400 and £600 respectively.
Step 4
Since this is a Simple Product, you just have to enter the basic details like Regular price and Sale price. The price was set to £400 for the booking fields and the first block that shall appear is Weekdays by default.
Once these settings are done, your frontend would appear as shown below.
The Weekdays block would appear like this.
The Weekends block would appear like this.
In both cases, only the Start Day will be shown as enabled in the Start Date calendar. The available dates in a week and the user will be shown and have to select one according to his/her plans.
The Add to Cart button is visible once the start and end dates were selected. By clicking on that button, the order is added to your cart and the View your Cart button is already there. When you click the View your Cart button, you will see the booking details to the cart page.
On the cart page, you can click on Proceed to checkout button to go to the checkout page.
The checkout page will show the booking dates you have chosen and the total amount of your order. Place your order and ensure that you have checked everything and then click on the Place Order button.
Once you are done placing your order, the order details are shown on the Thank Your page. Email notifications are sent to the customer and the administrator including the rental booking details.
This setup would take 10 to 15 minutes if you are doing this for the first time.
You can purchase the WooCommerce Booking & Appointment Plugin here.