Reservation Request Frequency
How often should we send Reservation requests to pmsXchange?
Reservation requests should be every sent 2 minutes to ensure PMS users have a good reservation delivery experience. If you need to extend this time frame the absolute maximum is every 5 minutes.
Failed Reservations
What would happen if the reservations are failed to be delivered to the PMS?
We have implemented a timeout feature for reservations which the PMS has requested from pmsXchange multiple times, and no confirmation was sent to pmsXchange. For such reservations an email will be sent to the hotel notifying them that pmsXchange could not confirm delivery, and advising the hotel to contact their PMS provider if they have any queries.
Rates
Why have I received Daily Rates that do not match with the Daily Rates that were sent?
There are a few scenarios where this could happen:
Channels sometimes do not specify the Daily Rates:
- Some Channels could send SiteMinder just the Total of the stay and do not specify the exact rate of each day. Therefore, SiteMinder will average out the daily rate from the RoomStay Total and number of staying days .
Some Channels do not specify Daily Rates of some particular dates due to some business reasons:
- As occasionally some Channels do not specify Daily Rates of some particular dates due to some reasons (i.e. free stay). SiteMinder will average out the daily rate from the RoomStay Total and number of staying days.
Why have I received a RoomRate Base amount which is different from the RoomRate Total amount?
There are a few scenarios where this could happen:
Total RoomRate has extras/discount applied. Please refer here.
Due to Commission Rate Delivery Preference applied to the Daily Rate Total. Currently SiteMinder does not apply the preference to the RoomRate Base amount.
Do we always receive both Resevation, Room Stay and Room Rate Total Amounts Before and After Tax?
SiteMinder forwards the reservations details as what we received. We will forward you both Amounts Before and After Tax if we receive both from the channels. However, as some Channels only deal with either Amount Before or After Tax, we then can only forward you what we receive from them.
Occupancy / Guests / Customers
The received response's RoomStay does not contain <ResGuestRPHs> section. Does the fact it is missing have any significance?
This <ResGuestRPHs> section is used link specific Guests to specific RoomStays, which is used to its full extent in the multiple room multiple guest reservations. A good example is here. However, some Channels deliver only one guest per reservation, therefore there is no reason to link 1 guest to the single room.
Age of Guests
Why don't we receive the Age of Children?
Unfortunately we do not receive specific data about Children in the messages we receive from the OTA channels. If the data has been captured by the OTA, it will be displayed in the ResGuest node as per the following link.
Usually in the OTAs, children are defined by an age range in the setup in the OTA extranet. If the hotel has a consistent child age setup in all the OTAs, it may be worth having this defined in the PMS too.
Arrival / Departure
Where can our hotels find information about Arrival/Departure details of the guests?
For Guests' estimated time of arrival (ETA), it will be sent under resGuestType@ArrivalTime <insert link here>
For Guest's Arrival / Departure details including transportation mode, flight details, etc., if the channels deliver this info, we will send them under resGuestType/Comments
Multiple RoomStays with Broken days
Occasionally we receive multiple stays with broken days, i.e. 1 - 5th May then 10 – 15th May. We would create two separate bookings into our PMS system. Each would have a separate PMS reference number.
How would we enter that into a OTA_NotifReportRQ message, as we only seem to be able to enter a single PMS reference?
Only 1 ResID_Value can be given to a UniqueID, so if a reservation comes in and it has the UniqueID - WTF-001 even though it has multiple dates can only be given 1 ResID_Value by your system. This being said sites don't send through multiple dates for a singular reservation, usually if this happens the site will make 2 reservations each with their own UniqueID which means you would give each reservation its own ResID_Value.
How to deliver multiple "ResID_Value" associated with one UniqueID
For multiple rooms booking, when we send OTA_NotifReportRQ request message, the reservation interface on your side expects only one "HotelReservationID”. However, on our side, we are generating one "ResID_Value" (e.g. 048734, 048735, ...) for each roomstay. We'd like to know how we can construct the XML message so that multiple "ResID_Value" are associated with the "UniqueID" in OTA_NotifReportRQ.We are getting the error message below:
Could not validate the schema: cvc-complex-type.2.4.d: Invalid content was found starting with element 'tag0:HotelReservationID'. No child element is expected at this point.
What is the issue and what should we do?
The ResID_Value we received contains either comma, space or both. If you would like to return multiple numbers within one ResID_Value, please have a dash (-) in between the numbers, for example, "048734-048735".
Why do all extra types that I receive get classified with only one "EXTRA" category?
Unfortunately we are only able to classify an extra if the channel itself classifies it when sending us the reservation. In terms of the BookingButton test account, it only classifies extras as 'EXTRA' because the current functionality of the BookingButton doesn't allow hotels to categorise extras. It is likely that you will receive EXTRA from most OTA channels as it is uncommon for them to categorise their extras according to this table.
How do we identify which Extras were booked with which room?
There is a ServiceRPH element contained in each RoomStay node and then a ServiceRPH shown against each @Service in the Services node. From this you'll be able to relate each Service with the appropriate room booked (RoomStay).
Fees / Commissions
Do you forward us the commissions that the channels charge for the booking?
This depends on if we receive the information from the channels. If they do forward us the commission details, we will attach them under Fee section. The fixed amount will be included in the Fee@Amount. You also can find the Percentage of Commission on the Total charge from the Fee Description
Payment / Credit Card
We saw that SiteMinder is now delivering Partial Credit Card under PaymentCard@MaskedCardNumber. Don't you send us full credit card number anymore?
SiteMinder is still continue delivering full credit card numbers. However, where a Channel only delivers Partial Credit Card (usually it will consist 3-4 digits), we will deliver this to your PMS.
Click here to expand...We only receive Partial Credit Card from you. How do our hotels received full credit card numbers for payment processing?
The hotels can obtain the full credit card details via the channel extranet or via the email/fax from the Channels.
