Setup private and shared dorms/rooms

If you create some pages with Vik Booking for your website of type "Rooms List", "Search Form" etc.. you will see how the booking form is presented to the guests. By default, and if the room-type has got more than one unit ("bed" in case of shared rooms) available, guests will be asked to choose how many "rooms" they would like to book, as well as for how many adults (and children, if enabled) they need such rooms. Such default labels (language definitions) may be confusing in case of a shared/dorm room, because the guests are looking for one or multiple beds.

Here comes the trick, which simply consists in overriding a couple of default language definitions like "Rooms" and "Room" into a more appropriate or generic term. The overrides are a technique of modification of certain contents, in our case of the default "language strings" of the extension, and they are useful yet powerful for the simple reason that no future updates will ever touch your "overrides". 

On top of that, there are tens of free extensions that quickly and easily allow you to change some language strings/texts.

Language Strings Override Tips:

• if your property only offers shared/dorm rooms, you can override the strings "Rooms" and "Room" respectively into "Beds" and "Bed".
• if mixed room-types are available (both private and shared/dorm rooms), then you can use a generic term for the strings override, like "Rooms/Beds" and "Room/Bed".
• provide some extra information/instructions to your guests by using the apposite description fields available for each room.

Display the contents/booking forms in the front-end section of your website:

Now that you have properly set up your room-types and that the labels will print an understandable word, it is time to decide how to display the various room types or booking forms.

The booking process can start from a booking form, or even by visiting a "Rooms List" page, for then clicking on a specific room to visit its "Room Details" page where the booking form will be displayed. The choice of how to display such content is only up to you and to the taste/style the website should have.

In case of mixed room types (both private and shared rooms), we always recommend using the Categories feature in Vik Booking to be able to assign each room type to one or more categories, which can be used as a filter, for example, in a page of type "Rooms List", or in a page/module of type "Search Form". This is always a good practice, no matter how you will decide to present the booking forms or how the booking process will start.

This way you can display only and all the "private rooms" on a specific page of your website by creating and using a Menu Item of type "Rooms List" and by using the apposite category filter. Alternatively, you could display the "Search Form" widget on some pages/home page of your site, or even use a Menu Item of type "Search Form", by forcing the search over a specific category, still by using the apposite filter.