Reseller Description
Booking.com is basically a global online platform/website where Hotels can list their properties and guests can book them to book accommodation all over the globe. The general principle of Booking.com regarding private listings is that you create an account at their side, fill it with the necessary information/configuration and start posting your listings. As soon as your listing becomes publicly available, the guests may book your property.
Booking.com can be linked Manually as well as through Content API. In the Manual linking process client’s need to first create the location and its properties at Booking.com and make sure all the configuration is in place on the reseller side and then do the linking of properties in MXTS. However, in ‘Booking.com Content API’ the client has to link properties in MXTS, and then the system will auto-create the properties on Booking.com side. Users will have to make sure that all the necessary/mandatory configuration that is required for a property to get created on Booking.com is correctly configured in MXTS, so that system can fetch those details and send it to Booking.com to create the property on their side.
Tasks supported by this connection
Export Availabilities and LOS (Length of stay)
For Booking.com connection, we link the Accommodation types on the type level. Units never come in picture to link, so the reservability which we send is always picked from type level. But we have 2 options to send the reservability to Booking.com:
(a) Type Level Reservability
In this option, we send the reservability from type level along with the number of nights of longest duration unit available as max stay. The drawback of this is that we send the reservability without considering partial availability. To explain with example (refer below screenshot), dates from 22-04-2022 to 25-04-2022, the type-level reservability is 7, so we send 7 reservability to Booking.com, but due to partial availability of units, reservation request for 7 units will fail while importing the reservation in Maxxton. However, that booking can be possible when the shuffling of booking on Unit 3 & 4 is done to make one unit fully available for whole duration.
(b) Unit Level Reservability
In this option, for each arrival day, we first get the longest duration unit available, and then we count the number of units available for that duration, and then that count is sent to Booking.com as reservability along with unit duration as max stay.
For example: Take example shared in below screenshot, for arrival on 20-04-2022, longest unit available is Unit 1 for 14 nights, and then for same duration Unit 2 is also available, so the total count for 20-04-2022 will be 2. Another, for arrival on 22-04-2022, longest unit available is Unit 1 for 12 nights, and then for same duration Unit 2 & 10 are also available, so the total count for 22-04-2022 will be 3. The drawback of this is that for 20-04-2022 the count will be 2, but if you see that if someone wants to book for 3 nights in Maxxton, it is possible to book 6 units, but as we will be sending 2 as availability, so only 2 can be booked. But yes, if Unit 1 & 2 get booked, then in next upload the count will be 3 for 20-04-2022 as the longest unit available will be Unit 5, 7 & 9.Export Prices(Multiple rate types)
We have two types of Pricing
a) Per day pricing:
Per Night prices are sent directly as they are configured in ‘Rates’. Special Prices cannot be sent to Booking.com for ‘Per day’ prices as the price cache is not used for the same
- Close room restrictions
- Minimum Length of stay restrictions
- Close to arrival restrictions
- Close to Departure restrictions
b) Length of stay pricing
In length of stay pricing (LOS), for every Arrival Date Maximum stay Prices are sent. Firstly, the LOS Prices get uploaded on Price Cache where the final price is calculated by considering special and other factors and then from there the final Prices are sent to Booking.com.
Example:
For 1st October,2022: 3 Nights Prices are configured as 350. So for 1st Oct Prices will be sent as:
1 Night prices: 0
2 Night Prices: 0
3 Night prices: 350
LOS prices take time to get reflected at Booking.com website as the prices will first get reflected on ‘Price cache’ and then those Prices are Exported to Booking.comImport Reservations (Multiple rate types)
a) Confirmation(Reservation status to Provisional)
b) Modification: The task that we support in modification request of reservation are
- Arrival/departure dates change
- Guest name change
- Credit card details change
- Room change
- Guest number(Subjects) change
- Add-ons change
c) Cancellation (Reservation status to Cancelled OR Declined, as per client choice)
Steps to manually connect with reseller Booking.com
Client gets in touch with Booking.com to create hotels and rooms at their side and do necessary configuration.
Simultaneously client is requested to create the Booking.com reseller in MXTS. The steps to create/activate a new connection are shown on Reseller Configuration
Above step will create the Booking.com reseller in MXTS and the system will auto add mandatory settings, however, the remaining configuration related to linking of properties needs to be taken care of by the user
Client is requested to create a JIRA ticket with a heading like “Connection with Booking.com” and add all important information in the same and assign the ticket to support-connection@maxxton.com so the connection team is aware of your interest in connecting with the reseller and they can assist you with all the queries you post in this ticket
Create a new DC for the reseller Booking.com and make sure that all the identified resources should have that DC selected/added in their representation
Create an employee if not present and make sure that the AO (Admin Organization) & all the Resorts are linked to the newly created employee
Create the linking for Booking.com hotel/room with MXTS properties in Linked Accommodation Types card. Please click on Reseller Configuration to see steps on how it is done.
Once the above process is done, please contact Booking.com to open/add that specific property/location for Maxxton and then inform support connection team about the same through the JIRA ticket
support connection team will complete a few final steps and make price & availability uploads for the linked properties to Booking.com
You can then monitor the reseller Booking.com from the /wiki/spaces/TP/pages/13699583
Supported settings/features
There are a lot of supported settings/features that Maxxton offers to their customers which adds value to their connection with Booking.com. Few of the settings are mandatory settings related to the endpoints, etc, which get added by the system automatically when user create the Booking.com reseller in MXTS. However, a few other feature settings can give you much-needed convenience in setting up certain things your way.
Booking.com specific settings are mentioned below
Important things to be noted