New in Drupal Rooms

We’ve been keeping busy since our last update on Rooms! We’ve just released Rooms RC2 and are readying for a V 1.0 release before we meet up for DrupalCon in Portland. Please download and test, as we will not be adding any new features for 1.0, just cleaning up and fixing bugs. We’re very close!

New functionality recently added:

• Flexible availability search with group size and children
• Revamped room selection to allow the selection of add-ons on room booking
• Added drag and select dates in calendar and assign status to them rather than using form
• Cleaned up the inquiry forms
• Made it easier to customize
• Fixed some minor bugs

We’ve also refreshed the rooms branding, including a redesigned logo: We'll be working to extend this rebranding to the drupalrooms.com site. Also, we’ve been focusing on UX.  We’ll make small fixes to the existing module but also spend time thinking about the bigger picture. We’re currently working on wires that incorporate UX best practices. Contact us for ideas/opinions on UX!

Longer term goals:

As soon as we can, we plan to develop Rooms distributions within the accommodations market. Of course, all the tools will remain open source, and users will be able to download and install packaged hotel web sites.  Several themes will be available. We want to continue to foster an ecosystem of people using Drupal Rooms and develop optional subscription services to them beyond what Drupal Rooms does. The first service we plan to offer is linking room availability with big online hotel reservation sites--with the added benefit that the hotel owner will retain his/her purchase data (and commission money), not the OTAs. Later, we might expand this functionality into more widespread travel sites or other types of bookings (ticket purchase, tour packages, cooking classes, etc). We've even had some inquiries on how Rooms could be used within hospitals. We believe that this first version of Rooms will offer the most complete, feature-rich, and flexible Drupal-based hotel booking solution available. Let us help with your Rooms implementation from back end customization to front-end themeing. We’re happy to work directly with clients or in partnership with other devs. Contact us!

Get involved in Rooms!

With over 25,000 downloads and over 300 sites reporting using Rooms, we know people are excited about Rooms - a powerful Drupal module to handle hotel bookings but the basics of a Drupal Hotel CMS that is both flexible and user-friendly - meeting the real needs of hotel owners. So let’s talk Rooms!

• Come see us at Drupalcon Portland at our stand or in our BoF.
• Help us make Rooms better and better as we work toward V1 release with your feedback, and feature requests.
• If you are a hotel owner or hotel website builder get in touch - we want to talk with you! We need your market experience to make sure Rooms has everything you need to make your business stronger.
• Learn more about Rooms here.