Introduction
As one of the world’s largest travel marketplaces for both established brands and entrepreneurs of all sizes, Booking.com enables properties all over the world to reach a global audience and grow their businesses. Booking.com is available in 43 languages and offers more than 28 million total reported accommodation listings, including over 6.2 million listings alone of homes, apartments and other unique places to stay. No matter where you want to go or what you want to do, Booking.com makes it easy and backs it all up with 24/7 customer support.
Integration model
Booking.com is the next Sales Channel (SC) that has been successfully integrated with Channel Manager. Property Managers (PMs) can now connect to Booking.com and start advertising their properties through this channel.
In this integration, there are two options you can synchronize your properties with Booking.com:
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either by connecting new properties to Booking.com or by mapping existing properties from Booking.com to Channel Manager;
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connecting property to Booking.com creates a property with a single room type in Booking.com;
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at the time of property connection to Booking.com, the property descriptive content as well as availability and pricing are sent to Booking.com by Channel Manager;
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if the descriptive content is updated in Channel Manager, it needs to be updated in Booking.com to remain in sync;
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availability and prices are automatically sent to Booking.com upon change in Channel Manager;
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reservations are retrieved from Booking.com every 60 seconds;
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modifications and cancellations are retrieved from Booking.com for bookings that were made after the connection was already established.
Categorization
Booking.com specialises in selling inventory en masse. In this system, guests can choose a specific room type from the available inventory , for example a double room in a hotel.
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Channel Manager hotel or group refers to the room type, e.g. Queen Apartment or Two-Bedroom Apartment and is synchronized as multi-unit. A multi-unit refers to a set of indistinguishable properties. These properties work the same way the regular properties do; however, they represent a number of properties with the same specification at the same address. An example of a multi-unit property is a set of identical hotel rooms.
At this point we do not support creating multi-units with multiple room types in Channel Manager. If you want to have them, then create them in the Booking.com site and map in Channel Manager.
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Channel Manager property refers to a physical room of a certain type, e.g. Property 1 and Property 3 are categorized as Two-Bedroom Apartment.
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Channel Manager rate refers to a particular pricing plan, which is created based on particular settings in your property. You can see your rates after selecting the Booking.com Channel Settings page.
Depending on whether your properties are connected to Booking.com from Channel Manager or mapped from Booking.com to Channel Manager, the way rates are displayed in Channel Manager differs.
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In case of connecting new properties to Booking.com, Channel Manager displays all the rates available for a given property.
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In case of mapping properties to Channel Manager, displaying rates in Channel Manager depends on how rates were created in Booking.com. There are two ways you can create rates in Booking.com: as stand-alone and child rates. In the case of stand-alone rates, you can update pricing freely. In the case of child rates, you cannot change the pricing, as it is inherited from the parent rate.
Tip: If you see fewer rates in Channel Manager than in Booking.com, it means some of your rates in Booking.com inherit pricing from their parent rates.For Booking.com, you can also create a separate rates having different Cancellation Policy and map them onto the properties in Channel Manager following Mapping properties to existing listings. Setting different Cancellation Policy per rate can be set only in Booking.com dashboard.
Important: Any additional rates created in Booking.com must be mapped in Channel Manager. Otherwise you risk your new rates will get out-of-date and result in overbookings. -
Contract details
In case the PM intends to advertise the properties on Booking.com, they need to agree on a contract. With Booking.com, the below agreements come into life:
New clients: If you do not have an account in Booking.com and manage up to 5 properties, you can use the Quick Connect procedure. If you manage more than 5 properties, it is necessary for you to sign a contract with Booking.com to start advertising on this channel. Read more at Establishing connection.
Existing clients: If you have already signed a contract with Booking.com and you have some listings available in the channel, you can immediately map them to the properties in your Channel Manager account on your own. If you have no listings available, fill in the connection form and select the properties to connect to the channel. You need to provide your Legal Entity ID obtained from Booking.com at signing the contract. Read more at Establishing connection.
Onboarding time: It depends whether you already are a Booking.com client. If you are an existing client and you already have the properties in Booking.com, it is up to 24 hours. If you are a new client, it is about 5 business days. Note, however, that it can take up to 2 weeks to receive your Legal Entity ID from Booking.com, which is mandatory to set up the connection. Channel Manager cannot influence this.
Commission: The channel commission is 12-21%, but it may vary.
Payment process: The details of the payment process should be agreed directly with Booking.com. For more information, please see Booking.com payment solution.
Length of stay: Booking.com allows to book stays for up to 30 nights.
Hotel ID: You can find the Hotel ID information next to your property in the Group homepage tab in the Booking.com dashboard or in the top bar after selecting a specific property.
