Since the hotel is likely to have specific requirements with regard to what types of data they need to capture, it's advisable that you hire a web developer than can write software that meets those requirements. Ideally you would hire a developer with experience in the travel industry, since there are large reservation network systems that could be tied into, which would give the hotel exposure to travel agents, etc.
There are open source PHP based shopping carts out there that will work "out of the box", but I would imagine a hotel wouldn't want a "shopping cart". Customizing shopping cart code to your specific requirements would probably be more trouble than writing software from scratch directly to your client's requirements. Besides that, I have yet to run across a PHP based open source shopping cart that wasn't insanely buggy, but YMMV. What you're really looking for is a way to process users' credit cards. Here's one way to do that in PHP, though I can't vouch for it, having never used it: http://pear.php.net/package/Payment_Process/docs/latest/ The basics of programmatically interacting with payment gateways are relatively simple, what's more complex is understanding how to enable the various kinds of functionality your client requires using that simple gateway API. Depending on how quick you are at picking up new technology, you might do OK (depends on how much programming you've done in other areas), but when you start thinking about the possibility of tying the reservation system into a larger travel network, you're going to want that programmer on your team. -j On 5/13/05, Erwin Heiser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Iım starting a website for a hotel and they would like to implement some > kind of on-line reservation system with possible credit card payments. Since > I have never done something like this before, are there any good (commercial > or not) PHP-solutions available for this? > Could I do this myself or do I have to call in a programmer? ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
