Booking engine¶
Your own booking page, on your own link, with no commission taken. A guest picks dates, enters their details, and the booking lands on your calendar — with a deposit paid up front, or with nothing paid at all and the room simply held for you to accept.
It is a hosted page rather than something you install — Zitlin gives you a link and a QR code to put wherever your guests already are: your website, Google Maps, Instagram, a WhatsApp reply, a printed card at the desk.
You can switch this on yourself, today
If you turn Collect a deposit online off, direct bookings need no payment setup at all — flip Enable Direct bookings on and your page is live. Guests book without paying, the room goes On hold, and you settle payment with them however you already do.
To take deposits online instead, support does that setup once: send them the bank or wallet account you want guests to pay into. Supported: PayPal, SEPA (EU), UPI, QRIS, DuitNow, Thai QR, SGQR, QR Ph and VietQR.
Settings¶
Settings → Admin → Direct Bookings
| Setting | What it does | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Enable Direct bookings | Your own on/off switch. Turn it off to stop taking direct bookings without losing your setup. | — |
| Collect a deposit online | On, guests pay a deposit before the room is held. Off, they book without paying and you settle with them directly. | default on |
| PayPal | Read-only. Support fills this in from paypal.me/yourname when they set up your payment details. |
— |
| Min stay (nights) | Shortest stay a guest can book. | 1–120, default 1 |
| Max stay (nights) | Longest stay a guest can book. | 1–120, default 30 |
| Prepayment amount % | How much of the total the guest pays to hold the booking. | 5–100, default 50 |
| Max booking window (days) | How far ahead guests can book. Stops someone booking three years out at today's rates. | 7–365, default 90 |
| Default meal plan | Pre-selected meal plan for new online bookings. | — |
The Booking engine footer under Settings → Admin → Policies & Facilities is shown at the bottom of every page of the engine — use it for house rules or conditions. See Property setup.
Prepayment amount % greys out while Collect a deposit online is off — there is no deposit to size. It keeps the value you had, so switching deposits back on restores your percentage rather than a default.
Set the deposit to 100% to take full prepayment
The percentage is what the guest pays now; the rest is collected at the
property. At 100 the stay is paid in full up front.
Deposit-free bookings are easier to abandon
A guest who has paid nothing has nothing to lose by not turning up, so expect more no-shows than a deposit-backed page produces. Nothing is confirmed without you — every booking still arrives On hold and holds your dates only until you accept or cancel it — but the morning check below matters more, not less, when there is no deposit.
Sharing your link¶
Online Services → Booking Engine in the main menu shows your booking link as a QR code, ready to display or download.
Put the link on your website's Book now button, in your Google Business profile, and in your social media bio. The QR code works well printed — on a table card, a business card, or a poster in reception.
The Zitlin hotel directory¶
Zitlin also publishes a public directory of properties, grouped by country and city, with each entry linking to that property's own booking engine. It exists to be found — by search engines, and by the assistants people increasingly ask instead of searching.
Your property is listed automatically once your booking page is live — that is, once Enable Direct bookings is on under Settings → Admin → Direct Bookings, your account is active and not restricted, and you are either taking deposits or have switched Collect a deposit online off. The directory lists exactly the properties that can actually take a booking, so if your page works, you are listed.
The country and city come from your property's address, so a blank or misspelt city is the usual reason a property is missing from where its owner expects to find it. Fix the address under Settings → Admin.
It links to you, not through you
The directory is a signpost. A guest who arrives that way lands on your own booking engine and books with you directly — there is no commission, no intermediary booking, and Zitlin never sits between you and the guest.
What guests see¶
Guests choose dates and guest numbers, then see your available room types with photos, descriptions and a total for the stay.
Prices are your Zitlin prices — room type rate, seasonal and weekday multipliers, and the extra-guest surcharge for adults over base occupancy. See Pricing.
Availability is the same availability your front desk sees, so a room sold at the desk cannot be sold again online.
Stay restrictions apply here
Minimum and maximum stay, closed to arrival and closed to departure are all enforced on the booking engine — a guest breaking one is told why. Your own front desk is exempt. See Channel manager.
Your property description and photos come from Settings → Admin → Start here; facilities, hotel policy and cancellation policy from Policies & Facilities below it. Fill them in properly; this page is doing the selling.
Your details¶
The guest enters their name, phone, email and any note for you, then ticks a bot check before continuing. It is one tick, no puzzle, and most guests are waved through without seeing anything at all.
Why the check appeared
The booking engine is the one page in Zitlin that strangers can write to. A deposit used to be the filter — a bot could fill in the form but not send money — so a deposit-free page needs something in its place. The check runs on the details step, before a booking exists.
If the check itself cannot be reached, the booking is let through rather than blocked. A problem at our end must not stop your guests booking.
Paying¶
The guest gets a QR code to scan, or a Pay with PayPal button, for the deposit amount you configured. SEPA shows the QR and your wire details rather than a button.
With Collect a deposit online off, this last page is a plain review of the stay — dates, room, guest, total — with a Confirm booking button and no payment step at all. The total shown is what the guest owes you, not what they owe now.
The money comes straight to you
There is no payment processor in between. The guest pays from their own banking or PayPal app directly into your account, so no commission is deducted, nothing is held for a settlement period, and there is no monthly gateway fee or provider to reconcile against.
The trade-off is that Zitlin cannot see your bank account, so it does not know when the money lands. You confirm the payment — that is the step below, and it takes a few seconds.
Guests have 30 minutes
A booking in progress expires after half an hour and the dates are released. A guest who wanders off mid-payment simply starts again.
Confirming a booking¶
This is the part to get into your daily routine.
When a guest finishes the last step, Zitlin:
- Creates the folio and booking with the status On hold.
- Records the money on the folio as a prepayment — only if a deposit was asked for. A deposit-free booking gets no prepayment and no receipt number; the folio simply carries the full amount as its balance.
- Emails the guest to say the booking is on hold pending confirmation.
- Emails you that a booking has come in.
The booking is not confirmed yet. Open the booking and it carries a pink banner:
- Verify Payment & Confirm Booking, with the amount the guest says they sent. Check that the money actually arrived in your account, then confirm.
- Confirm Booking, when no deposit was taken. There is nothing to verify — you are accepting the booking and releasing the room.
Either way, confirming moves the booking to a normal confirmed one and sends the guest their confirmation email.
An On hold booking cannot be checked in
Zitlin blocks check-in until the booking is confirmed, so an unaccepted booking cannot quietly become a stay. If a guest arrives on an On hold booking, confirm it first — or take payment at the desk and confirm it then.
Check for On hold bookings every morning
They hold your inventory while unconfirmed. If a payment never arrived — or, on a deposit-free page, if the booking looks like a duplicate or a test — cancel it and release the dates rather than leaving it sitting there.
Common questions¶
A guest says they paid but the booking is still On hold
Expected — Zitlin cannot see your bank account. Verify the payment against your own records, then use Confirm Payment of <amount> on the booking.
Can I give a corporate client a special rate online?
Not through the booking engine. Rate plans are chosen by your staff on a booking, not by guests, and there is no code or private-rate feature. Take corporate bookings at the desk on the appropriate rate plan — see Pricing.
How do I stop taking online bookings for a while?
Turn off Enable Direct bookings under Settings → Admin → Direct Bookings. Your setup and payment configuration are kept. To close specific dates instead, use a restriction or block the rooms.
A booking came in for dates I cannot honour
Cancel it from the folio and refund the money through the same channel the guest paid by. Zitlin records the prepayment but does not move money, so the refund is yours to make. With no deposit taken there is nothing to refund — cancel it and let the guest know.
I do not want to take payments online at all
Turn off Collect a deposit online under Settings → Admin → Direct Bookings. Guests then book without paying anything, the room arrives On hold, and you take payment however you already do. You need no bank or wallet setup for this, so it also works before support has configured anything for you.
Why is my booking engine showing a higher price than my room type rate?
Seasonal and weekday multipliers compound, and the extra-guest surcharge is added for adults over base occupancy — the booking engine applies it even though your front desk does not. See Pricing and Property setup.
Is the booking engine the same as the channel manager?
No. This is your own commission-free page. The channel manager sells the same inventory through Booking.com, Airbnb and others — see Channel manager. They share availability, so a room sold on either is immediately gone from the other.