Short-break sites and gift boxes for your B&B: Animod, Wonderbox, Weekendesk and more

Short answer: Animod, Wonderbox, Weekendesk, Social Deal and Weekendjeweg.nl don't sell a plain room but a package: one or two nights with breakfast, sometimes with dinner or a spa visit. Roughly, there are three kinds. On a short-break site the guest books a date straight away. On a voucher site such as Animod the guest first buys a voucher and later turns it into a stay with you. With a gift box such as Wonderbox or Vivabox someone receives a box or code as a present and the recipient picks a property from the list. For a B&B they mainly help fill quiet midweeks and winter months, provided you price the whole package properly and let the bookings flow into your calendar automatically.

Looking for the login page of Animod or another partner? That is on the partner's own site. BedFlow PMS is not part of these sites. This page explains what they mean for your B&B.

The three kinds, side by side

1. Short-break sites with a fixed date. Weekendesk, Weekendjeweg.nl, HotelSpecials and Voordeeluitjes.nl show your package with a price per date. The guest picks a day, books and pays. For you it looks like a normal OTA booking, except that a package comes with it instead of just a room.

2. Vouchers that get a date later. Animod, as it explains to guests, sells hotel vouchers for a short stay. The guest buys the voucher first and later converts it into a date at the hotel of their choice. Weeks or months can pass between the sale and the stay.

3. Gift boxes. Wonderbox and Vivabox sell a box or a digital code as a present. The recipient picks a property from the list and books with the code from the box. So you find out late who is coming, and often in which month.

The exact rules of each partner (how long a voucher is valid, who pays when, how cancellation works) are in their own contract. Read it before you sign: it differs per partner.

Why a B&B considers it

• Different guests. People looking for a package are looking for a getaway, not "a room in Ghent". They are often couples who want to get away in winter or midweek, exactly when your rooms are empty.
• The package sells itself. A night with breakfast and a bottle of bubbles or a spa moment stands out more than a bare room rate.
• Reach abroad. Animod and several OpenGDS partners focus on German and Dutch travellers, an audience that is hard to reach with your own website.

What to agree on beforehand

The price of the whole package, not the room. A package includes costs you don't have with a normal booking: the dinner, the bottle of wine, the spa visit. Deduct them from what you keep after the partner's commission or purchase price. How to build a package that leaves a margin is covered in putting together packages for your B&B.

Commission or net price. One partner works with commission on the selling price, another buys at a fixed net price. With OpenGDS you agree the commission and terms with the partner itself; OpenGDS charges properties no commission of its own.

Which dates you open. You don't have to be available all year. Many B&Bs only open packages on weekdays or in the low season, so they don't sell their busy weekends for less.

What happens to vouchers and boxes when you are full. A guest with a voucher or gift box expects to find a place somewhere. Agree how many rooms per date you keep open for such bookings, and make sure those rooms disappear from your other channels as soon as they are booked.

Where it goes wrong: the calendar

The biggest mistake is managing a short-break site in a separate extranet, next to Booking.com and Airbnb. A guest books through Weekendesk, you forget to block the room on Booking.com, and you have an overbooking. With vouchers and gift boxes the risk is even bigger, because the booking sometimes arrives by email or phone rather than through a system.

Two rules keep this under control:

1. Connect every channel that allows it to the same calendar. Then a room disappears everywhere as soon as it is booked somewhere. How that works is explained in preventing overbookings with a channel manager.
2. Put a booking that arrives by email into your calendar yourself straight away, with the voucher number or box code in the note. Then you also know at arrival what the package includes.

How BedFlow PMS handles it

In BedFlow PMS your rooms, rates and availability live in one place. You connect Weekendesk through the built-in channel manager (Channex), just like Booking.com and Airbnb. Animod, Wonderbox, Social Deal, Weekendjeweg.nl, HotelSpecials, Voordeeluitjes.nl and dozens of other partners are reached through OpenGDS: one connection to a European distribution platform that is free for properties. The partner creates the rate plans, you map them to your rooms and the bookings land in the same calendar as everything else. The steps are in the guide connecting OpenGDS; all channels are listed in All integrations, and Animod has its own page at /integraties/animod.

One important detail when you apply: ask the partner for a connection with the channel manager Channex, not with "BedFlow". Partners know the connection under that name.

When you'd better not

• In high season you are already full through your own site and Booking.com. A package then only sells cheaper what would have sold anyway.
• You can't guarantee the dinner or extras in the package every day.
• You don't want guests with a voucher you only see shortly beforehand.

In that case, start with your own packages and gift vouchers on your own site: no commission, and you decide when they are valid.

In short

Short-break sites, voucher sites and gift boxes are a useful extra channel for the quiet periods, as long as you price the package properly, only open the dates you want to fill and run everything through one calendar.

Curious what that looks like for your B&B? See the pricing or try BedFlow PMS free for 30 days at bedflow.eu.