Introduction

If you are looking for a free reservation system for your inn, hotel, pension, campground, marina etc. you are at the right place! Recent version of the Horizon reservation system has strong support of web bookings, which makes it perfectly embeddable component for implementation of booking features into web sites.

Why to use Horizon for web booking?

• is designed to work 24 hours a day, 7 days in week ,
• requires minimal hardware and software requirements so no further investments are required ,
• is easy to deploy and can be set up in less than half an hour, no special maintenance is required,
• it works with dial-up connection only, but all your data is available any time,
• Horizon is FREEWARE!

If your website still have no booking page, or you are a website maker and need to implement booking system quickly simply go ahead and find more info about Horizon!

Technical conception

The basic concept is that selected set of booking units is exported to remote database located at webhosting server. Web application at webhosting server displays list of available booking items for selected time range and creates new reservations:

Once a day (or more frequently, if it is necessary, of course) is local datbase of web server synchronized with master database. During synchronization are imported newly created bookings and can be adjusted number of booking units for remote database. Synchronization is fully automated and all user interface is provided from Horizon desktop applicaton:

Web booking interface

Web booking interface can highly differ because in any single case there is necessary to tune it along with website style and design. Maybe the best way is to have a look at our online demo web booking application which has look of our webpage:

Some related videos can be found here.

Desktop application

Except for its ability to act as management tool for web bookings Horizon can be used as a standalone booking system as well, of course. All standard booking system functions are available, plus rich set of extra functions and friendly features, for example:

Pricelist management User friendly interface Customizable color schema and attributes Room editor and generator Statistics with export to Excel® Tax and fees schema support Commission management Event calendar and time zones support Logginng of changes and operations Easy backup and restore database Document browser User defined document templates (printed, emailed docs) Custom data items management support

Booking robot

Under certain conditions, is not possible to use dial-up and full online model required. For such advanced scenarios of web reservations is available model with booking robot. Robot is an application, which provides remote website(s) network access to application functionality.
Because there is no remote database, but only master database in this model can be database utilized from many websites simultaneously. Robot acts as a xml/http proxy server so robot must be able to accept connection from the internet (although Internet user can not access it directly, just through website scripts) which requires special firewall settings.

A live demo is too available, but it requires Horizon installed.

Project development tree - versions of program

Project can be configured for several branches:

Full version works with Access database, supports parallel 24/7 web bookings from remote MySQL database at webhosting and can be utilized over LAN filesharing. This version is time limited to 15 days and requires license key when is testing period over.more

Booking bot is a standalone application built on program core as an online proxy server exposing functions of full version over http protocol to remote booking servers.more

For testing purposes there was available free edition, with limited set of functions. This edition is closed and is replaced with mini edition.

Mini edition contains time unlimited full functionality of full version except for LAN support plus some features has set limits (up to 10 rooms, only first two rooms can be booked over internet).more

Edition for SQL server uses instead of the Access database Microsoft SQL server. MSSQL is available for free with limited versions (e.g. version 2008 has limit max. 1GB RAM, 1 CPU, 4GB disk space for database) but it is more than enough for this purpose. This version can provide much better support for networking and averall performance, plus there is possible to take advantages of SQL server security and technology enhancements.

Call center edition is at the moment the largest and most complex version of Horizon, which allows work with about several dozens of databases simultaneously. Display mode is either one virtual superhotel or single (per single hotel) view which can be easily switched.

Web edition for MySQL over http is an special edition, which works with only remote MySQL database over http proxy written in PHP. This version can be usefull in B2B systems connected with slow modem speed connection. Although due to HTTP protocol it has to work slower than version for MS SQL server, it still has reasonable performance and is extremely simple to download, deploy and start booking with minutes. This branch is very fresh and still not yet in real world environment, so it is freeware at the moment and you can test it if you want - please feel free to contact us for help and support!

For more information please have a look at online help collection of short videos.

HORIZON RESERVATION SYSTEM - FAQ

Here you can find some of frequently asked questions. To display answer click link with question. To close answer click clink [close]. Newly added items are marked icon new: , modified items are marked icon updated: If you have a question not listed bellow, please don't hesitate to contact us!