Selling online and taking bookings online are pretty much the same thing.  All your doing is selling "space" for a period of time.

Recently, the folks over at Econsultancy.com wrote a great article about selling online and the less obvious drawbacks to staying 'off-line' and ignoring the potential of online sales. Here are just a few parts that we found interesting:

Boost to competitors

While you are still deciding on whether to make the move into e-commerce, your competitors may already be there, building up their search rankings and improving their websites.

By the time your company decides to take the plunge, you may have a lot of work to do to catch up.

Limited exposure

If you stick to 'off-line' retail, you have a relatively limited opportunity to make sales and, because you can only sell through your stores, a limited market for your products.

Moving online means that you can sell your products around the clock when your shops are closed, while your market will no longer be limited to those places where you have retail outlets.

Damage to reputation

If you are not selling online, and someone else is selling the same products as you then you have no control over the customer's experience.

If customers receive poor service from these websites, even though you have no control this experience is still linked to your product and brand, and could affect people's future perception.

The first two points are most immediately applicable to companies offering accommodation to students. There is a slow but steady movement online by a large number of companies, and a definite awareness of the value of providing services online is increasing. If you're not online now and looking for ways to provide more of your services online then you'll be left behind.

People increasingly expect to be able to interact with your business and pay for services over the internet, this is especially true of the 18-35 age group. In terms of increasing exposure to your services, selling and promoting your property management business online is by far the fastest and most cost effective way to reach out to a large cross section of your target audience. For a great example of using social media (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) to accomplish this check out this blog.

If you have a few mintutes you can have a read of the full econsultancy article here.