How to Connect HotelDruid with Online Booking Portals
The users of HotelDruid on the DigitalDruid.net
hosting service have the ability to synchronize availability, prices and reservations with some distribution
channels on the Internet, such as the Booking.com and Expedia.com portals for on-line booking. To
activate the connection between one of these portals and HotelDruid you must first get the login credentials to
access the service, the process for each portal is described in the interconnections page ("main menu" ->
"configure and customize" -> "interconnections"), normally it will take a few days to get them from the
portal.
These credentials (typically user name and password) can then be inserted into the HotelDruid
interconnections page to activate the interconnection with the portal. On the second page of the interconnection
activation you will be asked which combinations of rooms and rates from the portal you want to connect to
HotelDruid rates. So it's recommended, before activating the interconnection with the portal, to create a new rate
for each type of room/rate that is available on the portal (you can change the number of HotelDruid rates from the
"insert prices" page), this way you will be able to change the availability on the portal by changing the number
of rooms associated to these rates with the assignment rule 2.
Reservations in interconnected rooms will determine the availability sent to the portal, so make sure you
have entered all future reservations before activating the interconnection. If none of the reservations made on the
portal have already been manually inserted on hoteldruid then, on some portals, you can use the interconnection
button "download all current and future reservations" to download these reservations.
The extra costs are not taken into account in the calculation of prices for the portal, they can only be
used to set a minimum stay (costs associated with a rate from the portal "always in allowed periods", with a
minimum number of days), or with a null price and without restrictions (for example for cleaning days). You can
close periods on the portal by setting to zero the prices of the corresponding HotelDruid rates or by using the
assignment rule n. 1 for rates.
Once activated the interconnection in HotelDruid, whenever you change the prices of a rate associated
with the portal, the prices will be updated on the portal too, as well as each time a reservation is placed in
a room associated to a rate of the portal with rule 2, availability will also be updated on their website. You
can check in the portal backend that prices and availability correspond to the ones inserted in HotelDruid.
Moreover, every time you check availability in HotelDruid, new bookings will be checked for on the portal, and
if found they will be automatically downloaded and added to the HotelDruid database.
If a new reservation on the portal is not downloaded within a short period of time (usually half an hour),
it will be sent by other methods, such as a fax or email, so a periodic check (every 10 minutes) will be set
for new reservations when they are not sent with the "push" method.