General.

General details
Office address: Het Eeftink 11-12
Postal code: 7541 WH
City: Enschede
Country: Netherlands
Telephone number: +31 88 116 8901

Website: https://www.bookingexperts.com/

Switch.

BookingExperts is a PMS and an Interface at the same time so it requires the BookingExperts interface and BookingExperts mapping set up in CONNECT.

SmartCONNECT will extract the ARI at regular intervals from the BEX API and feed the data into the Connect API where the Business service takes care of redundancy checks. The activation of the Business Service is mandatory for this PMS.

Mapping will be done in CONNECT from the BEX ID’s to the Channel Manager codes.

Booking Experts APP

A Connect user (level 1) needs to be created by Dev and assigned to this property.  This can be a dummy user (e.g. hotelname@bookingexperts.nl / pw: 12345)

Give this user details to the property who will then go the Apps section to add SmartHOTEL.

To do this, they follow these steps:

Step 1

Step2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Click on the "CONNECT" button and login with the 1-time user that was created.

CONNECT

Under interfaces add Booking Experts and enter the interface channel ID from BEX.  The ID can be found in the IATA list or the logs

Credentials

The following should be provided by BookingExperts.

  • Hotel ID
  • Room ID’s
  • Rate ID’s

This can be found in the Booking Experts App.

Useful Information.

How is data received

The API for BookingExperts pulls data every 15 minutes.  This is a full upload.

***NOTE: Once everting is built and active then both the Heartbeat and GET cache will need clearing***

Mapping

The mapping needs to be created in CONNECT. In the PMS mapping you will map the room codes from the channel manager with the room ID’s in BookingExperts. The room ID's in BookingExperts can be found under the tab “design” and selection “types”.

Rate Information

You will also need to create one Base rate, this is connected to the pricelists in BEX. Rates are provided as a standard value so we have to apply a weight to the rate to add the extra person price if applicable. The Calculation Service and Max/Default Pricing settings need to be enabled in SmartCONNECT.

Price received from BookingExperts
{"StartDate":"2021-03-25T00:00:00","EndDate":"2021-04-01T00:00:00","RateCode":"RACK","Amounts":[{"AQC":10,"Occ":2,"Amt":600.0}],"RoomTypes":["CHAPP"],"Mo":false,"Tu":false,"We":false,"Th":false,"Fr":false,"Sa":false,"Su":false,"HasDOW":false}

Even though this says Occ 2 it is actually for 6 persons

Room set up in CONNECT

The Max adults setting is defining the NumberOfGuests value to be sent to the Channel Manager.

The Default Occupancy setting is only for EnnIT and works in combination with the weights

The weight is the calculation needed for Extra Persons if required

Price sent to CM

It is taking the received value from the PMS as the Default Occupancy Value and adding on the weight for additional occupancies up to the Max Adult setting and then will be sending the Max Adult value in the NumberOfGuests

Email setting

The guest email address provided in the reservations from the OTA's needs to be replaced by the hotel provided notification email address and the guest email is added to the reservation comments. This is because BookingExperts sends emails out for every reservation and the guest would have already received one from the original booking site.

Travel Agent Codes

Every OTA the property uses needs to be added to the IATA list in CONNECT. Without this setup reservations will fail to upload to the PMS or end up in the default channel

The current list at BEX will be retrieved and shown in the IATA code dropdown.  Only the channels for the selected property are shown in the list

If a new channel needs to be added select it from the OTA code list and click "Create Channel"

The channel will then be visible in the IATA code list. Profile ID is not required.  The channel will also be seen in BEX

Reservations

Some reservations may fail to submit to BookingExperts as a room cannot be assigned for the booking for the full duration of the stay. The only choice is to manually input the reservation with room moves.

The error message will be ifcResponse:"{"errors":[{"title":"Cannot construct reservation","code":"CONSTRUCT_FAILED","detail":"Could not find an accommodation","meta":{"error":"set_rentable_failed"}}]}"

Inventory Thresholds

It is possible to set up inventory thresholds in the BEX API. Check for "multibook_safety_margin" in the documentation:
https://v3.api-docs.bookingexperts.com/#get-category-availability

For now, the client can set this margin in the channel: