PHP hotel booking script: how to choose the right one

A PHP hotel booking script is software you install yourself: a website, a booking engine and an admin panel, bought once and run on your own hosting. For an independent hotel, B&B or villa, it's one way to take direct bookings without a monthly fee or a commission on each stay. This guide compares it with the alternatives and gives you a checklist to use on every demo before you buy.

Script, SaaS or WordPress plugin?

There are three common ways to take bookings on your own website. None is right for everyone.

If your site already runs on WordPress, a plugin such as Pandao Booking (free) is the shortest route. If you're starting a new website, or want an engine that doesn't depend on WordPress, a PHP script gives you both the website and the booking engine in one package.

What to check before you buy a PHP hotel booking script

A good script has a live demo with its admin panel open. Use it: twenty minutes on the demo will tell you more than any feature list.

On the guest side

• Book a stay on your phone. Most guests will. Search, pick a room, add an extra, reach the payment page: count the steps and watch for anything that breaks.
• Prices you can trust. The total shown before payment should include taxes and mandatory fees, with nothing added at the last step.
• Several languages. If your guests come from abroad, check that pages, emails and booking forms can be translated.

In the admin panel

• Rates and seasons. Nightly prices by period and day of the week, a minimum stay, closed arrival days, child prices by age, and rate plans such as non-refundable or breakfast included.
• A booking calendar. Every room, day by day, with bookings you can move and a form for phone bookings.
• Payments. Stripe and PayPal paid into your own accounts, deposits, payment on arrival and refunds for free cancellations.
• Calendar sync. iCal links per room for Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, so a booking on one closes the dates everywhere (how calendar sync works).
• Taxes. VAT included in prices and a tourist tax per guest per night, if your country has one.

Behind the scenes

• Hosting requirements. Check the PHP and MySQL versions against your hosting plan. A recent PHP version is a good sign: old scripts often stop working when hosts upgrade.
• Installation. An installation wizard and a screen that checks your server save hours.
• Updates and support. Look at the changelog: regular, dated updates show a product that's maintained. Check how long support lasts and how you ask for it.
• Licence. On CodeCanyon, a Regular licence covers one website. If you plan to sell access to the site itself, for example a booking platform you rent to hotels, you need the Extended licence.
• Your data later. Ask whether bookings and customers can be exported, and whether a new major version can import the old one.

One property or several?

Decide this before anything else, as it changes the whole product. A single-property script keeps the screens simple: one set of rooms, one set of rates, one payment account. A multi-property platform adds destinations, a search across properties, owners who only see their own hotels, and separate payment accounts per property.

• One hotel, B&B, villa or guest house: Panda Resort, $69 once.
• A hotel group, a destination website or a platform for independent owners: Panda Multi Resorts, $79 once, or $399 with the Extended licence if owners pay to use the platform. Read how to build a multi-vendor hotel booking platform.

What about open source?

If you have developer time, open-source systems are worth a look. QloApps, for instance, is a free hotel booking system built by Webkul on PrestaShop. You save the licence fee; in return, you install, configure, update and support it yourself, or pay someone who will. A commercial script costs a little upfront and comes with support from its author.

How Panda Resort measures up

Panda Resort is our PHP hotel booking script for a single property, built on Pandao CMS. Here is how it answers the checklist:

• A complete, responsive website with its booking engine, and a live demo with its admin panel open (username admin, password admin123).
• Rate calendars, seasons copied to next year in one click, child prices by age and rate plans.
• Stripe Checkout (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay), PayPal, bank transfer, cheque and payment at the property, with deposits and refunds.
• iCal sync with Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, verified guest reviews and a drag-and-drop room planner.
• Standard hosting: PHP 8.2 to 8.5, MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.3 or later, an installation wizard and a Diagnostic screen.
• $69 once on CodeCanyon, free updates and six months of support.

Not sure it fits? Try the live demo with the checklist above.