Selling Beds, Tents, Villas and Cabins: A Booking Widget That Uses the Right Word

Frontdesko lets each room type be sold as a room, bed, tent, apartment, villa or cabin, so the booking widget says "4 beds available" or "6 tents available". A photo manager uploads the pictures guests see on each card. Both are free.

By the Frontdesko team · Last updated: October 31, 2026

One Saturday at a Site That Sells Tents, Cabins and Dorm Beds

Illustrative scenario. A small site with 8 safari tents, 2 cabins and a 6-bed farmhouse dorm is a made-up property used to show the screens in order. It is not a customer story, and no figures here are real results.

Time	Where	What happens
07:15	Admin → Room Types	The owner notices an orange No photos tag on the Safari Tent card: guests currently see a grey placeholder on the booking widget. She clicks the camera icon, which opens Photos — Safari Tent, presses Upload photos and picks five JPEGs. The first becomes the cover, and a toast says "Photos uploaded".
07:30	Room Types → Edit → Sold as	Next to the occupancy fields is a Sold as select with Room, Bed, Tent, Apartment, Villa and Cabin. She sets Safari Tent to Tent, the Cabin type to Cabin and the farmhouse dorm to Bed. The label now shows on each room type card, and the Safari Tent card has a "5 photos" tag.
09:10	A visitor's phone, the booking widget	A visitor searches two nights for two adults. The Safari Tent card now has a cover photo and reads "6 tents available", with a quantity selector labelled "Tents:". The Cabin card says "1 cabin available". Tapping View Details shows the other photos and the description.
09:12	The farmhouse dorm card	It reads "4 beds available" with a "Beds:" selector, instead of "4 rooms available" for what is really a shared bunk.
16:40	A group of four	A group picks four beds. The price summary and the "Selected" and "Recommended" lines use the same noun, so the guest reads "across 4 beds" rather than "4 rooms".

Nothing about the price or availability changed that morning. What changed is what a guest sees: real photos, and the right word for what they are buying.

What Does the "Sold as" Setting Do?

Sold as is a label on each room type. The choices are Room (the default), Bed, Tent, Apartment, Villa and Cabin. It is display-only: it has no effect on pricing or availability.

The widget uses it in the availability line ("6 tents available", "1 cabin available"), the quantity selector ("Beds:"), the price summary, the "Selected" line and the "Recommended" line. Singular and plural are handled.
The admin shows it on the room type card.
An unrecognised value falls back to Room, so existing hotels are unchanged until you set it.

How do you sell individual beds?

The label does not create beds. A dorm sold as shared beds is set up as one room type whose bookable units each hold one guest: for example a three-bed dorm made of three rooms with a capacity of one each, which the widget then counts as three beds. The Sold as setting makes the widget say so. For how bed-level inventory and the bed map work, see dorm bed management, and for the direct-sale side hostel booking system.

How Do Room Photos Reach the Booking Widget?

Each room type card in Room Types has a Photos button (a camera icon) and a tag showing the photo count, or "No photos" in orange when there are none. The Photos window supports:

multi-file upload of JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 8 MB each;
a cover photo: the first upload becomes the cover and any photo can be set as cover later;
delete, with a confirmation. Deleting the cover promotes the next photo, and the widget stops showing a deleted photo immediately.

Photos appear on the room card and in the View Details popup of the booking widget. Until a room type has at least one photo, guests see a grey placeholder. Images are served through the booking engine's public image route, not by exposing the storage address.

Where Does This Fit for Glamping, Hostels, Villas and Cabins?

These properties sell different units under one roof, which is where a single word like "rooms" reads wrong. A glamping site sells tents and domes, a hostel sells beds, a cabin park sells cabins and a villa resort sells villas. Setting the label once per room type keeps the whole booking path consistent.

Glamping and camping: see glamping management software for per-unit inventory, seasons and add-ons.
Hostels: hostel management software and the comparison of hostel options.
Villas and cabins: villa management software and cabin rental management.
Embedding the widget on your own website: see packages, long-stay discounts and website widget links.

What Does It Not Do?

Sold as changes wording only. It does not change prices, availability, tax or how the unit is counted.
It does not create bed-level inventory. That comes from how the room type and its units are set up.
The unit wording is fully written for English. For the other widget languages the bed wording currently uses English text as a placeholder, and the other units fall back to English as well, so a German or Thai visitor may see "beds available" in English.
The admin screens for Sold as and room photos are in English for now.
Photos are images only, in the formats and size above. There is no video upload.

The POS, the PMS, the direct booking engine and the guest app are free with unlimited rooms. The paid add-ons are the channel manager and the AI assistant, banded by property size: Mint is $35/month for 0-10 rooms, Basil $42/month for 11-30 rooms and Saffron $54/month for 31-50 rooms. See pricing for local currencies. Syncing tents, cabins or beds to Airbnb and Booking.com uses the paid channel manager.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a booking widget say "beds available" instead of "rooms available"?

Yes. Set Sold as to Bed on the room type in the Frontdesko admin and the booking widget says "4 beds available" and labels the quantity selector "Beds:". The same applies to Tent, Apartment, Villa and Cabin. The label is wording only and does not change pricing or availability.

What does Sold as change besides the availability line?

The quantity selector label, the price summary, the Selected line and the Recommended line in the widget also use the unit noun, and the admin shows it on the room type card. If a value is not recognised the widget falls back to Room.

How do I sell individual dorm beds?

Set the dorm up so each bookable unit holds one guest, for example three rooms of capacity one inside a Triple room type, then set Sold as to Bed. The label only changes the words. Bed-level inventory comes from how the units are configured.

How do I add photos to the booking widget?

In the admin open Room Types, click the camera icon on a room type, then Upload photos. JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF up to 8 MB each. The first photo becomes the cover and you can set another as cover. Photos show on the room card and in View Details.

Why does my widget show grey boxes on the room cards?

The room type has no photos yet. The widget shows a grey placeholder until at least one is uploaded. The Room Types page tags such cards with No photos so you can find them.

Are the unit labels translated?

Not fully. The wording is complete in English. The other widget languages use English text as a placeholder for the bed wording, and the other units fall back to English, so visitors in those languages may see English unit words.

Does this work for glamping sites with tents and domes?

Yes. Set Sold as to Tent for tents or domes, or Cabin for cabins. The widget then says "tents available" or "cabins available".

What does it cost?

The PMS, booking engine and widget are free with unlimited rooms. The channel manager that syncs units to OTAs is a paid add-on at $35, $42 or $54 a month depending on property size.

Show Guests What They Are Actually Buying

Set the unit, upload the photos and watch your widget say beds, tents or cabins. Try it in a live demo.

Start Live Demo See Pricing

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