PitchDesk

The booking form your guests use

It sits on your own website, shows real availability for the nights a camper asks about, takes the deposit and sends the confirmation. There are two ways to put it on a page, and a hosted page for sites with no website at all.

What the camper does

  1. Picks the nights

    A calendar showing which nights still have space. Nights that are full, outside your season, or shorter than your minimum stay cannot be selected, so nobody gets to the end and finds out they were never allowed to book.

  2. Says who is coming

    Adults, children, infants, dogs and vehicles. If your pitch takes six and they ask for eight, they are told there and then.

  3. Chooses a pitch type

    Each type with its own description, photograph and the real price for those nights, including your seasonal and weekend rates. If you allocate named pitches, they pick the one they want here.

  4. Adds the extras

    Electric hookup, firewood, an extra car, a gazebo. Priced per night, per stay or per person, whichever way you charge for it.

  5. Reads your terms and pays

    Your cancellation policy and your site rules, on the page, with a tick box. Then the card payment, on Stripe, into your account.

The pitch is held for 20 minutes while they are paying, then released if they do not finish. Nobody else can book the same pitch during that time and no pitch is quietly lost to an abandoned basket.

What it shows when there is nothing free

It says so, on the nights they asked for, and offers the nearest nights that do have space. An empty calendar with no explanation is how a booking form loses a guest to the next site on the list.

What it shows when a card is declined

The reason Stripe gave, in words, and the chance to try another card while the pitch is still held. The booking is not confirmed and your calendar does not fill up with unpaid holds.

What it shows while it is thinking

Prices and availability are fetched live from your calendar, so there is a moment of loading. It says what it is doing rather than sitting blank.

Two ways to put it on your site

Both are one script tag. Neither needs a plugin, a developer or anything installed on your server.

In the page

The booking form appears where you put the div, as part of your own page. Best for a dedicated booking page.

<!-- put this where the booking form should appear -->
<div data-pitchdesk="pk_live_9f3c2a7b"></div>
<script src="https://pitchdesk.co.uk/w.js" async></script>

As a button

Any link on your site opens the booking form in a panel over the page. Best for a "check availability" button in your header.

<a href="https://pitchdesk.co.uk/book/oak-farm"
   data-pitchdesk="pk_live_9f3c2a7b"
   data-mode="panel">Check availability</a>
<script src="https://pitchdesk.co.uk/w.js" async></script>

If the script does not load, the link still works and takes the guest to your hosted booking page. Nobody ends up at a dead button.

No website at all?

Every site gets a hosted page at pitchdesk.co.uk/book/your-site. Put that link in your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page and your email signature and you can take online bookings without owning a website. A five van CL can run its whole season on that page.

How it behaves on your page

It takes the brand colour and the site name you set, and it uses your own pitch descriptions and photographs. It does not restyle the rest of your page and your theme cannot break it, because the form renders inside its own frame.

It is built for a phone first. Most campers book from a phone, in the evening, often on one bar of signal, so the form is a single column with large targets and no map or slideshow to download.

It works with a keyboard and with a screen reader, every field has a label, and errors are attached to the field that caused them.

It sets no advertising cookies and runs no third party trackers. The only outside connection is to Stripe, at the moment the guest pays.

Where it works

  • WordPress, in a Custom HTML block
  • Wix, in an Embed Code element
  • Squarespace, in a Code block
  • GoDaddy, Weebly and Jimdo, in an HTML widget
  • Any hand-written HTML page
  • A Facebook page or Google Business Profile, using the hosted link
If your website builder allows an embed code, it works. If it does not, use the hosted page.

Questions

Does the guest leave my website?
Only at the payment step, where Stripe takes over on a page in your own business name, and then they come straight back to your confirmation. Everything before that happens on your page.
Can I have more than one site on one account?
Yes. Each site gets its own key, its own pitches and its own booking page, and you paste the relevant key into the relevant website.
What does the guest get afterwards?
A confirmation email in your site name with their reference, the nights, what they paid, what is left to pay and your arrival instructions, plus a link to their own booking page where they can see all of it again.
Will it slow my website down?
The script is small and loads after your page has drawn. It does not block anything on the page and it does not load a framework.

Put it on your site and take a booking through it

Thirty days free with no card. The embed code is on your account page the moment you sign up.

£7.99 a month

£95.88 a year. Any number of pitches. No commission on anything you take.

Start free for 30 days How it works, start to finish

No card to start. Cancel from your own settings page.