Project Proposal – Hotel Booking System

Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Aim........................................................................................................................................................3
Problem Definition................................................................................................................................3
Objectives..............................................................................................................................................4
Justification............................................................................................................................................4
Expectations..........................................................................................................................................5
Tools..................................................................................................................................................6
Visual Studio Code.........................................................................................................................6
XAMPP...........................................................................................................................................6
Google Chrome..............................................................................................................................6
Languages..........................................................................................................................................6
PHP................................................................................................................................................6
HTML5...........................................................................................................................................6
CSS.................................................................................................................................................6
JavaScript.......................................................................................................................................6
MySQLi...........................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
Introduction
In the past the websites were mainly used by hotels only for promoting their products and services,
nowadays are used to attract customers and to offer them the opportunity to book rooms online
directly without using other third parties such as travel agencies. Booking used to be done manually
and mostly on a paper-based system which is prone to errors and also makes it hard to generate
reports for hotels.

A web-based Hotel Booking System will provide travellers the convenience of booking hotel rooms
from the comfort of their homes whilst at the same time affording their personal information privacy
as well as security of their financial information. It also ensures that travellers have a peace of mind
by knowing that they are not charged exorbitant prices by travel agents as well as the assurance that
the room they booked will be reserved for them.

A hotel booking system enables hotel managers to manage the reservation process without manual
efforts. Moreover, the online reservation system also improves the efficiency of the reservation
process compared to booking via email or by phone. The hotel’s online reservation system also
provides a direct way for hotels to monitor their revenue management. In addition, by booking a
room through a hotel’s online reservation system, customers are assured about the availability of a
room upon arrival at the hotel during their trip.

Aim
The main aim of this project is to develop a human effort independent system that should support
all the phases of a booking process and also generate reports on the booking reports and trends. It
also ensures that the process is done in a transparent and efficient way to the customer.

Problem Definition
The current manual reservation system uses paper and direct human interaction to book the hotel
room, manage reservations and make reports as well. Availability of information to other
departments such as accounting and marketing is therefore difficult. There is also no easy way to
generate reports as everything will be in different paper files which makes it cumbersome to go
through and that process will be prone to errors as well.

Currently a done is done via phone, emails or by visit in person to the hotel reservation office. The
guest’s personal details such as name, gender, age, contact details, nationality and duration of visit
or stay are written down on a paper-based form during booking and filed into a cabinet with other
booking for that month. During this process a payment is made to ensure that the room/s is/are
reserved for the client of which when this is done over the phone will also entail the customer giving
up some financial information like credit card numbers which might be used for fraudulent activities
should it fall into wrong hands.

On the other hand, there are travellers who prefer to use Travel Agents since the information about
the hotels such as the going rates for rooms will be normally limited for someone who is travelling.
The cost of booking a hotel reservation through travel agents and contacts are astronomical because
the middlemen add their own cost to the total cost. Other costs come from the process of approval,
money transfer, authentication etc. This is quite discouraging to an individual who intends and
therefore the need for a web-based system that can be accessed remotely without the need for
human intervention in it.

An analysis of this classical way of hotel booking systems the following main problems are
noticeable.

- High cost of booking a hotel due to involvement of agents

- Limited amount of Information concerning a hotel to be booked
- Paper based recording systems provide reports that may be incomplete and less accurate
- Generation of reports is cumbersome since it requires human effort to go through all the
files
- It is highly discouraging and expensive to book for a room via phone
- There is no way of checking room availability remotely
- Confidential financial information is given during the booking process
- Booking can only be done during working hours when the full staff is available

Objectives
The project seeks to curb the problems that come with the classical ways of Hotel Booking Systems
that have been discussed as well as add more features to the convenience of the travellers and as
well as the Hotel staff who will be using the system.

The project seeks to create a system:

- That provides information on room availability

- That assists with booking to prospective clients
- That assists with a secure way of making payments via PayPal and other payment gateways
- That is remotely accessible via internet
- That generates reports to decision makers
- That provides the ability to cancel/modify bookings to the administrators of the system
- That is user friendly and intuitive
- That has an encrypted database to ensure that no information is leaked

Justification
If a customer wants to know the types of rooms available, the rate constraints, availability of desired
types of rooms on desired dates, he has to approach travel agencies or guides available or by making
enquiries in person or making through telephone. If the customer wants to make a choice between
the hotels, he has to repeat the process for a number of hotels personally or through the middle
persons for the information is limited. This normally ends with them being charged exorbitant
charges.
With the coming of the internet age, times have moved and information is now readily available.
There is a need to move a step further to ensure that with the information that is available there is
need for Hotels can provide an easy way to their clients to book rooms safely and securely. A Hotel
Booking System is developed to overcome the most of the problems occurring in the manual system
by computerizing the existing system.

After computerizing the system, the Hotel Staff can finish their work in the least amount of time
possible and with very little effort as the users can now book without their intervention as well
generate reports too. The computerized system has many gains and efforts which the manual
system cannot give in any type of situation. On the customer’s end all the information will be readily
available for them to make decisions and there will be no hidden charges that normally come from
third parties assisting them with the bookings.

Expectations
The proposed system is a web-based application that allows customers to make enquiries online,
book for services providing the required details, make payments as well as provide reports when
needed. The online booking system will replace the classical booking system for hotels. Travelers or
any other customer can book and secure their place to stay before or without actually visiting the
hotel. Hotel Administrators can easily manage the inventory and rates of their hotel rooms.

The basic requirements state that the users will be able to search for room based on and able to
make instant online payment. The website will be maintained and managed by administrator. They
will have the authority to manage the products and offers.

Customers will be able to:

- Check room availability

- Make a booking
- Pay for their booking
- View their booking details

The Hotel Staff will be able to:

- Login
- Check room availability
- View booking details

System Administrator will be able to:

- Check room availability

- View booking details
- Alter / Modify a Booking
- Create user profiles for Hotel Staff
- Alter Room rates and offerings
- Generate Reports

This will be made possible by the use of a central database that is accessible via internet and is
remotely accessible from anywhere.

The following tools will be used for the project:

Tools

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web
and cloud applications

XAMPP

XAMPP is a free and open-source cross-platform web server solution stack package developed by
Apache Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database, and interpreters
for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

This will be used during development before the system is moved to a live server that can be
accessed online.

Google Chrome

It is a cross platform browser that shall be used to access the system.

Languages
The following languages will be used for the system:

PHP

PHP is a dynamic and general-purpose language that is used in the development of server-side
applications.

HTML5

It is a markup language used for displaying content on websites

CSS

It is used for styling web pages.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a frontend language that is used to design interactive and user-friendly frontend
applications.

MySQLi

MySQLi is open source relational database management system which is used on web applications.
After the system is done being developed it can then be moved to a cPanel based web server that
will host and house the database. The transfer of requests will be done via HTTP protocol as can be
seen in the figure below:

Figure 1 Requests being done to the server

Conclusion
There is no doubt that paper-based systems have out lived their lives in Hotels. They make it hard
not only for customers to make bookings but for management as well to access records and make
reports. The proposed system will bridge the gap between the two. It will provide benefits that
haven’t been realised by Hotels that use paper-based systems.

The proposed system is web based therefore remotely accessible and can be accessed 24 hours a
day. It will provide reports upon records and reports upon request. Heavy lifting will be done by the
code rather that by humans which is the case in classical hotel booking systems.

The system however has limitations since it will only be able to be accessed online. There is also a
need to ensure security of the records. It also only focuses only on bookings but however it can
easily be extended to some other sectors in the Hotel Industry such as personnel management.