Hotelbeds

Hotelbeds is an online content supplier offering hotels and activities in over 80 countries worldwide.

Following are the three types of commercial agreements that can be made with Hotelbeds:

1. Standard Hotelbeds Customer: According to this agreement, your company reconciles accounts with Hotelbeds branches worldwide. The reconciliation currency is agreed upon with Hotelbeds. The prices received from the interface are supplier prices.

2. Special Hotelbeds Customer: According to this agreement, your company reconciles accounts with the Hotelbeds head office. The reconciliation currency is agreed upon with Hotelbeds. The prices received from the interface are supplier prices.

3. Bedsonline Hotelbeds Customer: According to this agreement, your company reconciles accounts with the Hotelbeds head office. The reconciliation currency is agreed upon with Hotelbeds. The prices received from the interface are selling commissionable prices. The commission given is agreed upon with Hotelbeds.

After the agreement has been reached between your company and Hotelbeds, provide full details to your Project Manager. Based on this information, you will be instructed as to how your Hotelbeds interface should be configured in the system.

Setting Up the Interface

Special Notes

Setting Up the Interface

Setting up the Hotelbeds interface includes 3 stages:

1. Interface configuration

2. Installation of static files

3. Mapping process

4. Import branches

Interface Configuration

1. Go to Setup – Business Environment - Supplier Accounts - New Item.

2. Create a supplier account for Hotelbeds.

   In the IATA Code field (Company Information expander), enter the code of the relevant Hotelbeds branch.

3. In the Services expander of the supplier account, define Hotel and Activities as services. Ensure that the following options are selected for the services:



In the Paid By field, Define in Remark must always be selected when configuring the Hotelbeds interface. When this value is selected, the voucher shows the local Hotelbeds office responsible for the reservation and does not display the Our local representative section at the bottom of the voucher document.

4. Open the Online Supplier expander of the supplier account.

5. In the CRS Interface field, select HotelBedsXML from the drop-down list.

6. Select the Active check box.

7. Click the link in the text: Click Here to update interface properties.

   The configuration dialog box for Hotelbeds is displayed:

   

8. Enter the configuration details:

   1. In the Server IP field, enter details as supplied to you by Hotelbeds.

   2. In the User field, enter the user name supplied to you by Hotelbeds.

   3. In the Password field, enter the password supplied to you by Hotelbeds.

   4. In the Hotel extended details source section, select:

      • Local if the hotel details should be taken from the online hotel display rules.

      • External if the hotel details should be imported from the interface

   5. If you want Hotelbeds branches to be used during the reconciliation process instead of the Hotelbeds main supplier, select Use branches for reconciliation.

   6. In the Static Files Download section, enter the static file settings:

      • In the URL field, enter the URL to the location where the static files are stored

      • In the Retention period in days field, enter the amount of days for how long the static files should be retained

      • To manually update the static files, click Update Static Files.

      • In the User field, enter the user name for accessing the FTP folder where the static files are saved.

      • In the Password field, enter the password for accessing the FTP folder where the static files are saved.

   7. Click Save in the dialog box.

9. Click Save on the main page.

Installation of Static Files

The following 5 files supplied to you by Hotelbeds are installed in your database:

• Contacts.csv

• CountryIDs.csv

• DestinationIDs.csv

• HotelDestinations.csv

• TicketDestinations.csv

Mapping Process

When working with online content suppliers, it is necessary to map the destination values in the supplier’s database to those already defined in the local database.

This section will describe how to map the destination values in Hotelbeds to the destination values in the local database.

1. In the Online Supplier expander of the Hotelbeds account, click Match Destinations.

   This process can take several minutes to complete.

   A table will be displayed, presenting the destination values in the local database with those in the supplier’s database.

   A supplier destination value with a corresponding identical local destination value will be automatically matched and the two values will appear on the same row in the table. Rows with unmatched values will appear at the beginning of the table, followed by the matched values.

2. The unmatched supplier destination values relevant to products in your system need to be mapped either automatically or manually.

   • To map automatically:

   • Click by the supplier destination value to automatically add the supplier destination value to the local database and map the supplier value to the local value.

     Use this action with caution as this action copies the supplier's destination value to your database and in some cases may result in duplicate values. For example: If your local database includes the value London and the supplier's database includes London, UK Then, the action copies London, UK to your database, after which both London and London, UK are included in your database. It is recommended to consult your Account Manager prior to mapping the supplier destination values.

   • To map manually:

   • 1. Click by the supplier destination value.

        A drop-down list of local database destinations will be displayed. Select the relevant local database entry to match the supplier value.

     2. Click to save the entry or to revert.

   • To map the supplier destination value to more than one value in the local database:

   • 1. Click  and select Multiple Mapping.

     A multi-selection list which includes all the local destination values is displayed. Click the destination values in the Not Selected list to map to the supplier destination value. These values are displayed in the Selected list.

     2. Click Save to save the mapping.

3. Click Save.

Import branches

If you are a Standard Hotelbeds customer, in order to work with Hotelbeds, you are going to need to import into your database the Hotelbeds branches. A separate supplier account is create for each branch.

• To import the branches, in the Online Supplier field, click Update Branches.

After the branches are imported, for the supplier account of each branch, define Hotel and Activities as services, and ensure that the following options are selected.

Special Notes

1. Supported/Unsupported Features:

   Feature	Supported	Unsupported
   Description of Activity	✔
   Reservation with OK status	✔
   Reservation with Request status		X
   Reservation for different room types	✔
   Online reservation amendment of dates	✔
   All other reservation amendments (except dates)		X
   Same day reservation	✔
   Same day cancellation*	✔
   Per-night price breakdown		X
   Additional board base options	✔
   Pay/Stay Promotion	✔
   Address displayed in Google Maps format	✔
   Online reservation cancellation**	✔
   Cancellation fee*	✔
   Multi-language	✔
   Refine search according to location	✔
   Price-level per room	✔
   Villa category (for hotel service)	✔

   *Hotelbeds always approves cancellation requests (even for non-refundable price levels), and cancellation fees are still applied as usual. **In order to display and trigger cancellation fees in the Reservations System, in the cancellation fee policy module, in the Rule definitions tab, you need to select Enabled.

2. The age range for an infant and child varies according to the hotel selected. Hotelbeds determines the relevant price according to the age details entered in the search query.

3. When reserving activities from Hotelbeds, additional information may be required from the different suppliers. This information is different for each supplier and depends on the activity type. For each activity, Hotelbeds returns a list of questions. These questions are displayed after the Passenger Details page and are mandatory.

4. Hotelbeds allows access only to authorized IP addresses.

5. Special remarks returned by the XML are displayed.

6. Thumbnail images are displayed. Other images may also be displayed, according to the specific product.

7. When hotelbeds dictates the selling price, markup rules from the system are not applied.

8. When adding or deleting a remark to an online transaction, a new reservation record with the same details is created, the remark is added or deleted, and the old transaction is cancelled.