Booking links
Every year, the same email: where do we book the hotel? A booking link fixes that. You paste one small piece of code into your own website once, and from then on the right hotel link appears for the right event, without anyone touching the site again.
A booking link sends people to the hotel’s own reservation page. It is a signpost, not a booking form. Nobody fills anything in on your site, and nothing comes back to Herding Cats.
Whoever looks after your website needs to paste the code in once. After that it is all yours.
Before you start
The link only works once the event has a Booking link filled in on its Hotel tab. That is the hotel’s own reservation address, usually with your group code already in it.
If there is no link on the event yet, the code on your website simply shows nothing — no error, no empty box. It quietly waits.
Get the code
- Open the event
Go to the event’s Overview tab and look for the strip that reads Paste-once tags for your own site — once a hotel link exists it says Booking link is live — paste-once tags for your own site. Press Get snippets.
- Decide how it should look
Under Booking link appearance you can tick Render as a button if you want a button rather than a plain link.
There is a box for your own wording — for example Reserve your room. Leave it empty and it reads Book your room at {your hotel}.
- Choose what shows underneath
Under Show alongside the booking link, tick any of:
- Hotel name
- Hotel address
- Attendee rate — the per-night rate attendees pay
These settings apply everywhere the link appears, on every event, with no website edits.
- Copy the code
Press Copy next to the snippet you want. There are two:
- Booking link — this event — for one specific event’s page on your site.
- Booking link — whole site — one piece of code for a page template, which works out which event each page is about by itself.
- Send it to whoever runs your website
They paste it where the hotel link should sit. That is the last time they need to touch it.
The whole-site snippet gets pasted into your page template once and then covers every event forever — your webmaster pastes it once and never touches it again. The per-event version is for when you only want it in one place.
If you just want the general widget rather than a per-event one, Company settings has a card headed Hotel booking link widget with a Copy snippet button, plus the same choices about what shows underneath.
Add a note for one event
Sometimes one event needs something extra said — a group code, a cutoff reminder, where to park.
In the same snippets card there is a section headed Note for this event. Type your note, use the bold, italic, link, and bullet buttons if you want, and press Save note.
You do not have to touch the website again. Save the note here and it appears under the booking link on your site for that event. Clearing it removes it.
Links you add must start with http:// or https://.
What a visitor sees
A parent lands on your event page and sees a link or button reading Book your room at {hotel} — or whatever wording you chose. Under it, whichever details you turned on: the hotel name, the address, and a Rate line showing the attendee rate per night. Then your note, if you wrote one.
They click, and they are on the hotel’s own site booking their room.
The link takes on your website’s own fonts and colors. It is not an embedded frame with our design in it — it looks like part of your page.
If the hotel changes
Change the Booking link on the event’s Hotel tab. Your website updates itself. There is nothing else to do.
What to do next
- Hotels and rooming — the staff side of the same hotel.
- Ground and freight — getting everyone from the airport.