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Ferien-Karlsruhe.de: A Comprehensive Travel Booking Portal with WooCommerce

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Karlsruhe Holiday Portal ferien-karlsruhe.de

The holiday portal ferien-karlsruhe.de primarily offers recreational activities in and around Karlsruhe, as well as language, fun, and discovery trips to other European countries. The program is aimed at children aged 6 to 16 and has a strong focus on inclusion—the team leaders are trained supervisors who can individually address the children’s needs. Additionally, low-income families can count on support from various funding programs, ensuring that children do not have to miss out on beneficial holidays.

From a Simple Reservation System to a Full-Fledged Booking System

It was quickly realized that WooCommerce could not handle the required workflow: unlike tangible products sold online, where every order is paid immediately and the available stock is reduced, ferien-karlsruhe.de accepts reservations free of charge. In a second step, a down payment is requested to confirm the reservation. The remaining balance is only settled shortly before the trip begins, and a participant card is printed.

Features, Features, Features

A lot of features were developed specifically for the holiday portal. Here are some from the customer’s perspective:

  • Shopping Cart Time Limit: To avoid overbookings, the availability of an offer is reduced when it’s added to the cart. However, the cart must be checked out within a certain time, otherwise the offer is reset.
  • Waiting List: If an offer is fully booked, an interested party can add their child to the waiting list. This way, the child may still be able to participate if another reservation is canceled.
  • Extended Information in Checkout: Unlike most online shops, there is a booker and the child for whom the offer is reserved. Multiple offers and multiple children can be reserved in any combination. Information such as name, date of birth, and any special needs (e.g., ADD/ADHD, disability, …) are provided for each child.

Ferien Karlsruhe: Homepage - Filter

The holiday portal’s homepage offers a filter to quickly set important parameters and narrow down the display of offers. The selection options are automatically taken from the offers, ensuring no “dead entries” occur.

Ferien Karlsruhe: Shopping Cart Time Limit

Clicking “Add to Cart” starts a countdown timer. When it reaches 0, the cart content is deleted. The time can be set in the WordPress Backend.

Ferien Karlsruhe: Extended Order Process

During the order process (checkout), a child must be assigned to each ordered offer. The detailed information is necessary to properly assign children (for example, for holidays with luggage, a girl is placed in a girl’s room). Information about disabilities is also important to know if the team leaders have the appropriate qualifications.

From the operator’s perspective:

  • Offer Status: A newly created offer goes through various statuses: Draft, Approved, Bookable, Fully Booked, Completed, to name the most important ones.
  • Customer and Reservation Status: Bookers become contact persons (they don’t always have to be parents), children become participants, and reservations become bookings.
  • Subsidies: Various subsidies can be entered for offers.
  • Print Function for Participant Cards: Once the trip is paid for, the participant card can be printed at the appropriate time. For this, the print job is transmitted to the internal IIS server, to which the printers are connected. The software (.NET) was programmed by SaaS Web for this purpose.
  • Customer Communication: Unlike the standard, mail templates can be customized with each manual call. They also include individually created PDF attachments. All customer communication is also archived.
  • Booking Export for Accounting Software: The STJA works with commercial accounting software to which all money inflows and outflows must be transmitted.
  • Cash Registers: There are cash registers in the office whose contents must be recorded for accounting purposes.

Ferien Karlsruhe: Overview of Offers

Here, existing offers are listed and the most important data is displayed. Additionally, the buttons can be used to edit offers (left), manage associated participants, reservations, and waiting lists (middle), or access further functions such as copying an offer or closing sales (right).

Ferien Karlsruhe: More Details on the Offer
Clicking the arrow on the left displays more details about an offer. If the desired information is not shown, you must switch to edit mode. There, all parameters of the offer can be viewed (and changed).

Ferien Karlsruhe: Edit Offer

An offer is divided into 6 sections: the first two cover details such as the name, location, type, and description of the recreational activity. The “Dates” tab sets the period of the activity, as well as when the offer is bookable. “Prices” determines the sales price displayed on the website. Additionally, possible surcharges or subsidies are set up. Under “Participants,” both the minimum and maximum number of participants are determined. Furthermore, places can be divided into groups, e.g., boys’ and girls’ accommodations.

WordPress and WooCommerce Compatible

It was particularly important during development (approximately 400 hours of work) that the result would not impair WordPress’s update capability, which was successfully achieved. The offers created in the new module generate (and overwrite existing) WooCommerce products, which can also be listed and browsed through the corresponding menu.

Professional WordPress Development by SaaS Web

Are you looking for a competent and experienced WordPress developer for your own project? Contact the SaaS Web Team.

Do you want to offer a vacation program online? The vacation platform is in use in Karlsruhe and Mannheim. More about the vacation platform for municipalities

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