FAQ Q261: What are bundles?

Bundles allow you to group multiple products and services into a single offer / bundle. In the planyo vocabulary, this means that a bundle can include resources (including packages) and coupons. Please note that the resources can come from all sites of your metasite (if you are the administrator of a metasite). The resources can be each reservable for a different time period. For other resources which have no fixed rental period, you should include coupons which will allow the customer to make a free reservation at a later time for the desired time period.

Bundles are somewhat similar to packages but there are lots of differences (see the differences in this FAQ question). Mostly, bundles allow tourist regions (metasites) to group products from different owners / providers (planyo sites) plus with bundles you can program each resource for a different duration, or for products which the customer should schedule themselves, you can include a coupon (for given amount, for given number of entries, for given number of hours, or for the entire duration of the stay).

A bundle is a regular resource, and you define all the settings just like for any other resource (including the price, seasonal settings etc.) The only exception is that the duration must be fixed. A typical bundle will either start on any day (leave default settings), only on a specific weekday such as a weekend bundle or weekly stay (you need to select the start weekday in the seasonal settings), or it can be an event which starts on specific date (e.g. New Year bundle starting on Dec 31). Once you have the bundle created and configured, you must define its contents. For each such bundle item you must specify:
In case of coupons, you must first define the coupon in site settings / coupons and then add it to the bundle. Most likely the coupon's price should be set to zero. This means the coupon will NOT be visible (available for purchase) by normal customers and only the admins will be able to create such coupon OR it can be also included in the bundles. The coupon will always be private and will have no code. This means that the customer can simply go to the provider's website (or click the link in their confirmation email) and reserve the resource for which they have received the coupon using the same email address as the one used to reserve the bundle. Please note that the coupon be activated only when the bundle reservation is confirmed.

Reserving a bundle will be only possible when all the included resources are available. Please note that the calendar preview will NOT reflect this, it will only check the number of bundles already reserved when displaying the availability. The bundles are not meant to be used with a calendar preview.

A typical example of a bundle would be an all-inclusive weekend bundle:
Other examples could be a route where you reserve a different hotel for each night of the tour, or you can use the bundle to make reservations for the same resource but at different times, e.g. 1 hour of activity, then 30min break, then 1 more hour. Another possibility is to make a resource both a bundle and an event-type resource which allows you to create bundles for specific dates, e.g. New Year's eve special.
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