Home → Arctic Reservations → Guest-Facing Site → Online Rental Settings
30.9. Online Rental Settings
As with online reservations, Arctic also provides you with settings to control how your rentals are presented to guests online. To access these settings, go to the "Settings" page under "Online Rentals" and click the "Pencil" icon next to "Settings" as shown here:
The "Configure Settings" page is divided into four sections. The first section contains general settings that allow you to specify how long to hold items, the maximum quantity of an item that can be rented online, how far in advance rental reservations can be made, specifying season start and end dates and whether to show items that have no available inventory.
The first setting is the "Hold Spots For" setting. As with the "Online Reservations", this setting allows you to tell Arctic how long to hold an item in a guest's cart before releasing it to allow someone else the chance to book it. By default, Arctic will hold items for 1 hour to give guests time to complete their shopping and finish checkout. If you have lots of items or offerings for guests to choose from you may want to increase this time. Or if you have a high demand for items and don't want items stored in carts for that long, you may want to decrease the time. The lowest time increment you can enter is 15 minutes. This ensures guests have plenty of time to select their rental items and finish checkout.
The "Maximum Quantity" setting allows you to tell Arctic how many of any single item you want guests to be able to rent online. If a guest tries to rent more than the "Maximum Quantity" you have set, Arctic will ask them to submit an inquiry instead of allowing them to book the rental online. By default, Arctic sets the "Maximum Quantity" to 10.
The next setting is the "Maximum Days in Advance" setting. This setting allows you to tell Arctic how far into the future you want guests to be able to book online rentals. By default, Arctic sets this to 365 days.
The next two settings allow you to set a "season" for which you will allow online rental bookings. The "No Rentals Start Before" and the "No Rentals Ending After" settings have to be updated each season but they allow you to ensure that guests cannot make online rental bookings outside of your operational season, i.e. a guest can't rent a canoe for December when you are closed for the season.
Note: The "No Rentals Start Before" and "No Rentals Ending After" setting should only be used if you have not specified business hours. If you have specified business hours that include your seasonal operational months, then you can choose to limit your rentals by your business hours. For more details see the "Limit Rentals" section of this page.
The last setting in this section is the "Show Booked Items" setting. This setting allows you to tell Arctic whether to show items with no available inventory for guest's to submit inquiries for or whether to suppress those options so guests only see items that could be booked for their specified dates.
The second section of the "Configure Settings" page is the "Limit Rentals" section.
In this section, Arctic allows you to specify how rentals can be made online. The "Start" and "End" settings allow you to specify whether rentals can start at any time or whether the must start or end during your business hours.
Note: Arctic will use the "Business Hours" you specified under the "General Settings->Business Hours" settings to determine when you are open. If you have no hours specified, Arctic will give you an error if you try to constrain rentals to start or end during your business hours. (Business hours can be set per business group if needed.)
The last setting in the "Allow overnight hourly rentals" setting allows you to specify whether guests can rent an hourly rental item overnight or whether it must end on the same day it started.
The third section of the "Configure Settings" page allows you to set the "Action Labels" for the buttons on the guest-facing site.
Arctic provides default labels for all of these instances but you can change them if you would prefer an alternate label. Below is a breakdown of when each label would be used.
Inquire: The inquire label is used for any rentals that are not available due to either seasonal restrictions or a rental request is outside of the defined business hours for which you allow online rentals to be made. An alternative label could be "Please Call".
Past Cutoff: The past cutoff label is seen once a rental has passed the online rental cutoff you set up on the rental item for the time after which you did not want guests to be able to book the item. However, this cut off doesn't mean the item is unavailable just that the booking is happening last minute. An alternative label option could be "Please Call".
Insufficient Quantity: The insufficient quantity label is seen when a rental doesn't have enough inventory to accommodate the number of items, the guest would like to rent.
Above Max Rental Size: The above max rental size label is seen when a guest is trying to rent more items than the maximum rental size you set for online rentals in the settings detailed above. An alternative label could be "Please Call".
Book: The book label is seen for any rental that is bookable by a guest. Alternative labels could be "Book Now" or "Reserve".
Note: Remember that Arctic's goal during the booking process is not tell a guest "No" when presenting the rental offerings you have. Even if you change the action label to "Please Call", if a guest clicks the button they will be taken to the built-in inquiry form Arctic uses. This page also displays your phone number if the guest would like to call but they will still be able to submit an inquiry instead.
Also Note: Long labels appear all on a single line, so the longer the label is the bigger your buttons will be. It is best to keep the labels as succinct as possible.
The fourth section of the "Configure Settings" page is the "Advanced" section. The "Advanced" section is where you can use conditions to further define restrictions for your online rentals. For example, if you have lodging as a online rental offering which has a 2 day minimum normally but a 3 day minimum for all holidays, you can set conditions to ensure guests must book 3 days for the holidays you define. These settings should be tested thoroughly to ensure that they are functioning as desired. If you have trouble configuring the filters needed, please feel free to contact support and we will be happy to help.
Note: The restrictions placed in the "Advanced" settings do not effect rentals made via the backend. This ensures ultimate flexibility for your staff when making rentals via the backend while ensuring guests online adhere to your policies.
Once you have configured the settings to your preferences, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save Setting" to save your changes. Any alterations made will take effect immediately. To see your changes you will simply need to refresh any guest-facing site pages you already have open or open a new page.
Note: Online rental settings are available per business group. This allows you to configure different settings for different business groups depending on the items in those groups. This is particularly helpful if you have lodging and gear rentals where the lodging has a 3 day minimum for holidays but gear rentals are exempt from that restriction. You can then load your lodging business group and set the "Advanced" settings to be sure your lodging rental offerings are governed as desired for holidays while leaving the "Advanced" settings blank for your gear rental business group.
If you have any additional questions regarding the online rental settings and how they effect the online rental process for your rental items, please feel free to contact support and we will be happy to help.