Why Your Setup Matters
Each LodgeKit product uses the words, billing defaults, booking records, and connection options that fit the accommodation you sell.
The right words in the right product
A student housing team should see residents, rooms, beds, tenancies, rent, arrears, wellbeing, and condition reports. A hotel team should see guests, rooms, reservations, nightly rates, housekeeping, deposits, and booking-site setup.
Available Product Setups
Choose the product closest to the accommodation you sell. You can start with a specialised product or use general accommodation until the best match is clear.
- LodgeKit Student Housing: student accommodation, residential colleges, hostels, and rooming houses with residents, rooms, beds, tenancies, rent, arrears, wellbeing, condition reports, and compliance.
- LodgeKit Hotels: hotels, motels, inns, and reception-led properties with guests, rooms, reservations, nightly rates, housekeeping, deposits, amenities, reports, and booking-site readiness.
- LodgeKit Vacation Rentals: Airbnb hosts, vacation rentals, holiday homes, and short-stay businesses with properties, stays, cleaning turnover, deposits, and listing-site records.
- LodgeKit Caravan Parks: caravan parks and holiday parks with sites, cabins, mixed reservations, guests, deposits, amenities, payments, reports, and park-friendly channel setup.
- LodgeKit Campgrounds: campgrounds and outdoor businesses with sites, campers, reservations, deposits, amenities, lean billing, and simple outdoor booking-site records.
- LodgeKit Apartments: serviced apartments and aparthotels with apartments, guests, reservations, mixed nightly or monthly rates, housekeeping, condition reports, arrears, deposits, and accounting.
- LodgeKit Co-Living: shared living communities with members, rooms, beds, stays, membership or rent billing, deposits, arrears, wellbeing, and condition reports.
What Changes in the App
The selected product affects the words and defaults your team sees in LodgeKit. Inventory, people, booking records, invoices, reports, emails, portal copy, booking-site prompts, and optional tool notices use the accommodation language where possible.
Terminology
Units become rooms, properties, sites, apartments, or other inventory labels. Guests become residents, campers, members, or guests. Bookings become tenancies, reservations, stays, or bookings.
Suggested tools
Each product highlights the tools normally needed first. For example, student accommodation prioritises beds, arrears, wellbeing, condition reports, and compliance; hotels and short-stay rentals prioritise booking sites and housekeeping.
Billing cadence
Nightly, weekly, monthly, or mixed-rate defaults are suggested based on the product. You can still adjust rates and billing rules to match your business.
Connections
The connection list changes priority by product, so Xero, Stripe, GoCardless, booking sites, channel managers, or portal access appear where they fit best.
Booking Sites and Third-Party Reservations
Booking-site setup is intentionally controlled. LodgeKit supports reviewed imports, external mapping, readiness checks, and logged availability or rate updates so incoming third-party bookings can be checked before they affect local availability.
- Hotels prioritise Booking.com, Expedia, Google Hotel, and channel-manager readiness.
- Airbnb and vacation rentals prioritise Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, Stripe, and approved channel-manager paths.
- Caravan parks prioritise Booking.com, Expedia, Hipcamp, Stripe, Xero, and compatible channel-manager connections.
- Campgrounds prioritise Hipcamp, ReserveAmerica, Booking.com, Stripe, and controlled custom channel imports.
- Serviced apartments can combine hotel-style Booking.com or Expedia connections with Airbnb-style channel-manager paths.
Use approved channel paths
Do not connect booking sites by scraping portals or sharing staff passwords. Use approved APIs, official partner flows, iCal where appropriate, or a supported channel manager so connection details, mappings, and audit trails stay secure.
Changing Your Setup
Go to Dashboard > Settings > Organisation and choose the accommodation product that best matches your business. Review the suggested tools and connection prompts after saving, especially if you already have units, people, bookings, or booking-site mappings in the system.
If you sell more than one type of accommodation, choose the setup that matches the daily work your team does most. Mixed accommodation businesses usually start with LodgeKit Caravan Parks, LodgeKit Apartments, or general accommodation.
Was this article helpful?