First of all, SuiteCRM is a Customer Relationship Manager…It’s calendaring capability is not particularly streamlined for customers to look at, and it has not been optimised for use as a booking platform. It could be used as such, but you’d need a lot of effort, technical knowledge and time spent in order to get it to the point where it could be used successfully and simply for this type of thing.
There are numerous dedicated applications in existence for booking ‘something’. Car parking locations/meeting rooms/holiday lets etc, with which you’ll get a much more ‘pain free’ experience. Do a search for ‘holiday booking software’ and perhaps try reading posts like:
and you’ll see what I mean. However, if you want to experiment with SuiteCRM then go for it!
Giving standard logins to travellers is a really BAD idea. I know that there are security groups etc, but it is not the most user friendly experience for a one off user, and travellers want the bare minimum and simplicity in their booking process. You don’t want to worry about accidental data leakage. At a push, if a manager FORCED me to use this for some reason, I’d consider using the SuiteCRM REST API to provide a very simplified view to the customer. This requires a reasonably high level of understanding and knowledge, and is not really for the faint of heart, or a novice programmer.
With respect to calendaring. The calendaring within SuiteCRM is optimised for sales processes, so doesn’t quite work, however your approach of using an account as a property, and using the associated calendar would work, BUT it doesn’t provide the same flexibility that more dedicated calendars have. e.g. better 2 way synchronisation.
With respect to payments, PayPal is actually quite easy to integrate into a website, although business accounts oven offer a software payment interface as well. Paypal is readily available in many ‘off the shelf’ products, whereas business account integration will probably mean that you require programmer assistance. You really want booking and payment to be completely automated so that you can use your time more constructively. Whilst you could probably get someone to program in all the different payments for your properties, I seriously believe that you should go for dedicated holiday rental software. You’ll thank yourself if you do.
HOWEVER…where SuiteCRM WILL help is:
- You receive notification of booking.
- You send out thankyou and invoice.
- You get an alarm a couple of days before booking date to send updated instructions and directions such as PIN number for key lock etc.
- You maintain a record of your interactions with a particular customer…if they are a returning customer, you remember that they loved the beach/cathedral/restaurants etc.
- You get a reminder the day before to go and hand the property back, and sort out a cleaner etc.
- You buy a caravan site with 500 caravans, and recruit another 5 staff. SuiteCRM provides shared views of everything, so you can go on holiday, and also cope if one of your staff is off sick etc etc
- You automatically get surveys sent out to people after they visit, and manage to find out about all those minor issues where people were too polite to comment.
- You get voted the best holiday location in the world as a result of this attention to detail, and efficient management…
- …
As such you might end up with something like SuiteCRM integrated into other systems to provide an efficient management process