Booking.com: Synchronise bookings prices availability

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Booking.com: Synchronize Bookings, Prices and Availability
This page is about the menu   (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER > BOOKING.COM  > MAPPING and explains how to export prices, availability, rules and import bookings, modifications to bookings and cancellations for existing listings on Booking.com
Use these instructions if you want to import properties from Booking.com to Beds24.

When all of your prices, and rooms are set up in Beds24 you can start the integration with Booking.com:

  1. Initiate the connection in Booking.com
  2. Map your rooms and Booking.com rate plans
  3. Set the rooms you want to sync to "Enable"
  4. Import all upcoming bookings
  5. Check what will send to Booking.com
  6. Activate the connection

Read the complete instructions before you start the integration.

Use these instructions if you want to import properties from Booking.com to Beds24.

1 What you should know and do before getting started

As a longstanding Booking.com Premier Partner Beds24 can offer you advanced functionality and many convenience functions. Once set up you can manage everything directly from Beds24 which will save you time and make working with Booking.com really easy.

Learn how the channel manager works.

If you want to export inventory (availability) Booking.com demands prices to be sent from Beds24 so you will not be able to set prices the Booking.com extranet after the connection has been enabled.

All of your prices, rooms, and bookings from other sources must be set up in Beds24 before you connect:

  • The prices you want to send to Booking.com need to have Booking.com activated under "Channels"
  • Beds24 can not import past booking from before Booking.com was connected as a distribution channel. You can add these manually in the Calendar, via the "Add booking" button at the top or import them from a .csv file in (SETTINGS) > PROPERTIES
  • Your rooms and room types in Beds24 have to match your set up in Booking.com. If you sell rooms individually at another channel or your own website and want to sell them on Booking.com as a "room type" with a quantity of more than one you can set up virtual rooms.

1.1 Capabilities and Limitations

With this connection you can:

  • send prices and availability
    • send multiple prices
    • add a multiplier to mark prices up or down
    • create Booking.com rate plans if you want to add additional pricing options
  • send restrictions
    • send minimum stay
    • send maximum stay
    • send closed to arrival and closed to departure
  • import and manage bookings
    • import new bookings, modifications to bookings and cancellations (importing modifications or cancellations can be disabled for individual bookings)
    • report no-shows date changes and guest misconduct to Booking.com
    • report invalid cards to Booking.com. If you use Stripe you can set to automatically report invalid cards to Booking.com (go to (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER to activate this option)
  • create and manage Booking.com promotions
  • view reviews and react to reviews

Limitations:

  • Extras taxes and fees will not automatically send or update. Set/change these in your Booking.com Extranet unless you want to manage your full Booking.com content from Beds24.
  • Beds24 imports only confirmed bookings. If you have set to only accept "Requests" you will need to accept the booking in your Booking.com extranet and they will import once they are confirmed.
  • Changes to availability and prices will be instantly sent to the channel. Changes to settings for example minimum stays, or quantity of rooms or the multiplier will send with the next update but you have the option to push them manually if you require an instant update.

1.2 Prices for Booking.com

Our connection with Booking.com supports Occupancy Pricing (OBP) so Beds24 can send a price for each occupancy defined in your prices in Beds24. We will automatically set all newly connected properties to "Occupancy Pricing (OBP)" which also allows you to just send one price per day for the full occupancy.

  • If you use Daily Prices, a price for each date and occupancy will be sent. Multiple occupancy prices can send on each rate plan. Extra person price in the daily price will send. See this tutorial on how to use daily prices.
  • If you use Fixed Prices, 1 person, 2 person and room price will send. The room price will send for specified occupancy. Multiple fixed prices with different occupancies can send on same rate plan. Prices for "Extra Person", "Extra child" and discounts set in the "Discounts" tab of the Fixed Prices can not be sent.
  • If you currently use RLO (derived) prices for different occupancies on Booking.com:
    1. If you want to keep RLO pricing, the Beds24 prices you want to send to Booking.com need to to be the right price for "base number of guests" in Booking.com so Booking.com can calculate correctly.
    2. If you want to send prices for different occupancies from Beds24, contact Booking.com and ask them to remove all linked prices. Then change your pricing model in Beds24 to "Occupancy Pricing".

Prices for dorms

For dorms Booking.com requires the bed price be sent to them as the room price. They do not accept a single price for a dorm. Therefore we will have to manually adjust your pricing model. If you want to send a single price for other rooms you can create additional rate plans for single use in (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER->BOOKING.COM > RATE PLANS.

2 Connect a property on Booking.com to a property in Beds24 to synchronize prices, availability and bookings

This channel has a very specific activation process that must be followed carefully. Click on "Expand" to view the details for each step.

Step 1: Initiate the connection in Booking.com

Step 2: Enter your Booking.com property ID

Step 3: Map your rooms

Step 4: Map your Booking.com rate plans

Step 5: Enable rooms

Step 6: Set a multiplier to mark your prices up or down or for currency conversion (optional)

Step 7: Import upcoming bookings

Step 8: Check what will send to Booking.com

Step 9: Activate the connection

Step 10: Remove Auto-Replenishment (optional)
Step 11: Check that the connection is working properly

3 After the connection is activated

Changes to availability and prices will be instantly sent to the channel. Changes for settings for example minimum stays, or quantity of rooms or the multiplier will send with the next update. Click on "Update" if you want to push them through instantly.

3.1 Communication with guests

You can communicate with Booking.com guest directly from Beds24.

You can view all messages which Booking.com makes available from the "API Messages" component on the DASHBOARD and individual communication from the "Messages" tab in the booking.

You and your guests will see the messages in Booking.com Messaging Center.

Currently messaging with guests from Booking.com has following limitations:

  • Guests must click on "View Messages" in the email to login to Booking.com and answer from there.
  • If a guest hits "reply" on E-mail they received from Booking.com, Booking.com does not send the reply to Beds24 and will also not make the reply available in Booking.com.
  • Booking.com does not allow links in messages. Use attachments instead.

Properties can send messages to guests within the following time frames:

  • From the time of booking until 7 days after the guest checkout.
  • From the time of booking until 7 days after the booking is cancelled.
  • If the guest messages about the booking, the property gets an additional 14-day window to reply to the guest irrespective of when the booking was cancelled or when the guest checked out.
  • Currently, guests can send messages to properties from the time of booking until 66 days after the checkout.
If you use dependencies you can only assign the bookings into a room in the same property as the room which is mapped to Booking.com.

To use this function

  1. Add the component "API Messages" to your DASHBOARD
  2. To send Auto Action Emails via messaging set "Send Message" on the "Messaging" tab in the Auto Action to one of the API options.
  3. Bookings need to be in a Property that is connected to Booking.com to use the Message API, otherwise communication will be via Email. If you are not sure your connection has Message API, please log into Booking.com and and go to ACCOUNT > CONNECTIVITY PROVIDER. Disconnect from Beds24 and reconnect this time ticking all tick boxes as shown here: https://wiki.beds24.com/images/6/69/Extranet-booking.png

Booking.com allows .jpg and .png attachments but no links or pdfs.

Ensure you do NOT use special characters in the auto action message text as this will breach the Booking.com security checks, and the message will fail to send.

3.2 Manage bookings

3.2.1 Credit cards, charging virtual credit cards & payments

Credit card details are imported and shown on the "INVOICE" tab of the booking. If not please refer to "Missing credit card details" in "Troubleshooting" section below.

Bookings with payments collected by Booking.com will show the payment amount collected as a payment in the "Invoice" tab of the booking.

Charge virtual cards automatically

Virtual cards can be set to be auto charged at the date they become valid. To use this option set "Auto Process Virtual Cards" = Yes

For Booking.com virtual cards you can set to adjust the charge automatically to the full amount available on the card at the time it is charged. To do so create a rule with these settings and specify it in the booking.com "Virtual Card Payment Rule" setting:

  • Funds Source: Virtual Card
  • Payment value adjustment = choose any except for "None"
This option is available for customers who use Stripe. If you set "Virtual Cards" = Yes without Stripe activated the system will create a pending payment which can not be collected.

A payment rule can be specified to be attached to the pending payment, the payment rule can further manage the conditions to collect the payment, for example it could specify to use virtual cards only and not a guest card. Click here for more details

Charge virtual cards manually

If you manually charge virtual credit cards please note that they can only be charged after the activation date.

3.2.2 Report No-shows, invalid cards, date changes guest misconduct, request cancellations or restrict channel modifications

You will see buttons in the "Details" tab of the bookings which allow you to

  • Report No-shows
  • Report invalid cards
  • Report date changes
  • Report guest misconduct
  • Request the booking to be cancelled

If you do not want to allow channel modifications by default you can change the setting for "Allow Channel Modifications" value" in (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER.

3.2.3 Info Codes for relevant information

Info Codes in the "Info" tab of the booking show you relevant information about the booking and the guest.

Code Use
BOOKINGCOMCARD invalid card reported to Booking.com
BOOKINGCOMFLAG Booking.com general info flag (Genius/no credit card)
BOOKINGCOMVIRTCARD Booking.com sent a virtual card
BOOKINGCOMBANKTRANS booking paid via bank transfer from Booking.com
CARDTOSTRIPE card details were sent to Stripe
STRIPEPAYMENT payment imported from Stripe
STRIPEFAIL card could not send to Stripe
CARDEXPIRES added when the card expires before check-in

3.2.4 VAT value on extra items

If an extra item name in the booking matches the name of an upsell item for the property, the VAT value of the upsell item will be used. Otherwise, the VAT value defined in the Property booking rules will be used.

3.2.5 Different invoice templates

If you need a different invoice template for the bookings from this channel you can use the invoicee function.

3.3 Reviews

To access Booking.com reviews from your DASHBOARD unlock the DASHBORAD click on the hamburger menu then on "Extentions" and add the Booking.com Review Module.

3.4 Create and manage Booking.com promotions

Promotions can be created, modified and deactivated in (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER > BOOKING-COM >PROMOTIONS.

Click here for more information and setup instructions.

3.5 Manage or add Booking.com Rate Plans

To manage your rate plans go to (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER > BOOKING.COM > RATE PLANS. If you want to offer multiple price options for example a non-refundable rate or your rate plan contains meals you can also create additional rate plans.

3.6 Limit the maximum number accepted bookings if you do not want to offer all rooms

By default, all available rooms are sent to activated channels. In (SETTINGS) CHANNEL MANAGER > CHANNEL INVENTORY limit the number of accepted bookings for this channel.

4 Troubleshooting

4.1 Common issues

"Room code is not unique" warning when saving in Beds24.
No Room codes are available
The room is being unexpectedly closed at Booking.com
Messages from Auto actions are not visible in Booking.com message centre
Credit card details are missing in Beds24
Deleting a rate or price in Beds24 will not delete the price in Booking.com

4.2 Error messages

Any errors reported by Booking.com will be emailed to you with the error message as returned by Booking.com. The error message usually includes information about the date, rate or room with the problem and a brief description. Below are common error messages and how to fix them.

Hotel access denied
OBP_PRICING_PASSED_FOR_ LOS_RATE, OBP_PRICING_PASSED_FOR_RLO_RATE, OBP_PRICING_PASSED_FOR_DEFAULT_RATE, OBP_PRICING_PASSED_FOR_SINGLE_USE_RATE
INVALID_USE_OF_SINGLE_OCCUPANCY
NOT_A_VALID_OCCUPANCY
WARN_PRICE_TOO_LOW_LIMIT and WARN_PRICE_TOO_HIGH_LIMIT
Not allowed to update Single Use Rate for Room or CANNOT_SET_SINGLE_USE_RATE
Rate is not active or RATE_NOT_ACTIVE or RATE_NOT_ACTIVE_FOR_ROOM or RATE_DOES_NOT_EXIST
Room is not active or ROOM_NOT_ACTIVE or ROOM_ID_INVALID
RATE_IS_A_SLAVE_RATE
RATE_EDITABLE_ONLY_ON_EXTRANET
Room reservation does not belong to this hotel reservation
Message thread not found
Failed to post message: Message content failed to pass security filters
Message failed to send to reservation 12345678 - content or attachment is required
This account doesn't have access to this property.","code":"FORBIDDEN"
You cannot mark credit card as invalid since the property has not passed trust verification checks
Connections to fix: 0
OCCUPANCY_EXCEEDS_MAX_PERSONS

5 Disconnect

  • Set 'Enable' to 'Disable' this will stop Beds24 sending data to Booking.com. This will not remove the data from Booking.com and it will still be bookable.
  • To completely disconnect the channel manager please log into your Booking.com extranet and click on the Account icon in the top right-hand corner. Select Channel Manager from the drop-down menu. Click the Deactivate button to cancel the connection to Beds24.

6 FAQ

I have multiple Booking.com hotel ids. How do I set this up?
I have multiple Booking.com accounts. How do I set this up?
Will I receive notifications on new bookings?
Do guests receive a confirmation?
How do I modify or cancel a booking?
How can I access credit card details?
How do I add a promotion for Booking.com?
How do I add extra costs or fees?
Can I send different prices for different minimum stays or for different numbers of guests?
What to do when I receive an overbooking?
Why did a booking not import?
Why is the price for the booking wrong?
What do I do when I have a no show?
What do I do when a guest provides an invalid credit card number?
I accidentally set my connection as a one-way connection, now I want a two-way connection