About Us

Trusted since 2004 by hotels, holiday homes and campsites across the UK, Allocate has been helping accommodation providers of all types manage their online bookings with a flexible, easy-to-integrate booking platform. The first customers, who worked with us throughout the development, were Marston Hotels and Classic British Hotels. Campsites, a more recent market, now account for over £3M worth of bookings each year.

We built Allocate to make direct booking simple for both guests and accommodation teams. Whether you manage a single property, large group or consortia, Allocate simplifies how you handle bookings, payments and guest communication.

Founded by Charles Holdsworth in 2003, Airspace Software Ltd is responsible for the Allocate product, a ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) system.

Charles studied engineering at Bath University, his early career being with Lucas engineering. By his mid-twenties he was supporting systems within various engineering departments. A move in the early 90’s to Fidelity Investments saw a further seven years working in systems support.  Charles then joined an Internet start-up, a consultancy that developed websites and website systems.  Having been involved with various development projects, including a hotel group system, Charles started Airspace Software Ltd in 2003 and started developing the Allocate booking system. Charles’ background in engineering suited the analysis of the requirements and development of a specification that still forms the core of today’s Allocate product.

Fundamentals

When booking accommodation you should see availability instantly and find what you’re looking for quickly, the whole process needs to be intuitive and work across all types of device; desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. You should never progress a step to find there is no availability and be told to “try a different date”. Ideally you should stay on the accommodation’s domain and server whilst you’re making the booking.  These principales have always been paramount for Allocate from its inception.

Onboarding

The booking panel (widget) can easily be added to your website and given colours to match it. This method keeps the customer under your domain and branding.

Integration

Allocate is integrated with: SiteMinder, Pitchup and Xero. campsites.co.uk is being added. API endpoints allow access to a multitude of data and actions.

Security

When payments are taken to confirm bookings, PCI DSS compliant gateway partners are used, currently Stripe and Opayo are the options.

Support

Product support is provided via online help, email or phone, whichever best suits the customer or is most logical for the query being asked.

Flexibility

Different properties, products and guests require different styles of booking and several styles may be needed on one website;

  • booking by date or price

  • booking by room, property or pitch

  • booking by discount, package or flash sale

  • booking by promo code

Guests should be able to choose supplements or extras specific for each room being booked.  They should be clear what stage they are at in the booking process, know what they’ve selected so far and how the price is made up.  Confirmation emails should be sent when a booking is completed.

Cross property availability searches should be an option for groups, whether a Hotel Group or Consortia, a collection of Apartments, Holiday Villas or Campsites, a guest should be able to check which members of the group have availability in one search.