Can I import bookings from sites like Booking.com etc?

Yes. Each room supports multiple iCal URLs. You can get the iCal URL from your control panel at the sites that provide it. Most popular booking sites do provide you with iCal URL

I have problems with receiving emails

Hostel just sends the emails to your WP installaiton so if emails are not delivered this is most likely a problem with your installation. We suggest installing a free plugin like WP Mail SMTP or Postman SMTP to test and improve your emails delivery. Hostel will automatically send its emails through any SMTP plugin you have installed.

Hostel WordPress Plugin

Create your hostel, small hotel or BnB site with WordPress. Manage rooms, booking, unavailable dates, and more.

Create your hostel, small hotel, or BnB site with WordPress.
Hostel is online booking system with easy back-end management.
You can publish the booking forms, room calendars, and room lists with shortcodes so the plugin fits any WordPress theme.

Features

Manage your booking mode: accept Paypal, manual payments, or don’t allow online booking
Manage email notifications
Manage rooms, beds, and prices
Set unavailable dates when you are on vacations or just don’t want to accept guests in some rooms
Manage bookings, process payments, contact customers
List your rooms by using shortcodes
Supports iCal / .ics to synchronize bookings with online systems. You can export and import bookings to/from all popular booking sites like Booking.com, AirBnB.com, Hotels.com etc.
Localization / translation – ready
Mobile / touch – friendly

There are more and better features + premium support in the PRO version. Check it on our new site: wp-hostel.com

Getting Started

Go to Hostel link in your admin menu to manage your rooms and rates.
Use the shortcodes to install a list of your rooms or to add the booking code to a post or page where you have described your rooms.
Set up unavailable dates if you have such.

Shortcodes

[wphostel-list] will display a table with your available rooms. A date selector on the top lets the user choose dates of their visit and then the rooms list is updated. If you have enabled booking in your Hostel settings page, the table will also show “Book” button when appropriate. The button will automaically load the booking form. You can pass the attribute “max_days” to specify the maximum day interval that can be selected to show the table.
[wphostel-booking] displays a generic booking form with a drop-down selector for choosing room, and a date selector. If you use the [wphostel-list] shortcode you most probably do not need this one because the booking form is automatically generated.

For translating the plugin check the Help page under the Hostel menu in your administration.

Community Translations

The following translations are currently available. Please note they are maintained by volunteer translators and we can’t guarantee their accuracy.

Spanish: wphostel-es_ES.mo | wphostel-es_ES.po

Version 1.1.7

Security fixes

Version 1.1.5

Tables in the administration pages are now made responsive so you can work with them in all mobile devices
Added class “wphostel-book-button” to the “Make Reservation” button to allow styling
Replaced CURL with WP HTTP API
Prevent XSS and removed unwanted slashes in Manage Bookings
Added DB indexes for better performance

Version 1.1

Improved the Unavailable dates management. Now you can select a date range to make it unavailable at once. Any partially overlapping periods will also be shown there for each room so you can easily switch to them and cleanup the unavailability.
Added iCal / .ics support for easier synchronization with other services
Added possibility to use your own versions of the views / templates and modify the plugin pages without losing your changes on upgrade. See the plugin’s internal Help page for more details.
Two new arguments added to the [wphostel-list] shortcode: form_horizontal and show_table. Check the internal Help page for details.
Added option to limit the period in the future available for booking
Now you can choose whether guests can book from today or tomorrow
Changed the Paypal postback endpoints accordingly to latest Paypal security changes
Security fixes – sanitization of vars, etc.
You can now sync bookings with external services through iCal URLs – see the Edit Room page for details
Added sorting on the Bookings page

Version 1.0

Booking ID added in the Bookings table to help finding a booking for cancellation, referrence etc
Added email log for all notification emails sent out from the plugin. Emails are logged from version 0.9.3 ahead.
Added “show_titles” argument to the [wphostel-list] shortcode. It allows you to show the room titles in the rooms listing table.
Fixed the datepicker CSS bug
Added debug mode to see SQL errors in case you have any problems with the plugin
Disallow selecting dates in the past when booking
Added payment error log to see why Paypal payment was not marked successfully
Added option to use Paypal PDT instead of IPN
Added option to allow other user roles than admin to work with the plugin
Fixed bug, the attribute “show_titles” of the wphostel-list shortcode did not initially take effect when page is loaded

Version 0.9

Changed the booking form design to avoid styling issues
Added setting to auto-cleanup unconfirmed/unpaid bookings after given interval of time
Added setting for required minimum stay (X days)
Added {{room-name}} variable for the email contents
Added “max_days” attribute for the [wphostel-list] shortcode
Your custom date format will now be used accross the date selector fields
The datepicker can now be localized and styled using the configuration fields on the options page
Optionally send notification emails when marking booking as paid from admin

Version 0.8

Reworked all forms to work only with Ajax. This will let you use multiple
Removed the requirement and setting for booking form URL. This is no longer needed
Improved the booking form validations
“Per room” price is now available. When this is selected number of beds become irrelevant because your guests are booking the entire room.
Fixed bug: tables were not properly created on installation
Setting a custom currently is available
Added ajax loading of the beds in the booking form to prevent confusing numbers on the private rooms.
Fixed bug in [wphostel-book] shortcode

Version 0.7

Added “wphostel-book” shortcode which allows you to place a booking button on any page (usually on a page where you have described your room manually, with pictures etc)
Added a validaion on the [wphostel-list] so no more than 5 days interval can be selected (to avoid creating long ugly tables with rooms). Setting soon to be made configurable.
Added zebra tables in manage bookings and manage rooms pages
Changed the date drop-downs on the front end to use the date picker
Major improvements of the availability logics, differentiating between dorms and private rooms
Fixed bug with resetting the room type on editing
Fixed HTML content-type of the auto-mails
Fixed bug with pending status when manually marking booking as paid
Fixed JS validation error on the [wphostel-list] shortcode
Fixed problem with overlapping the “to” day when booking and showing availability
Fixed issues with unavailable dates: when date is unavailable, all beds should be considered unavailable