Hotel Buyers API (Legacy) - Cancel Policies

Dear Buyer,

Please be advised that we are updating our Valuation response to provide more precise information regarding cancellationPolicies.

What is it?

In order to avoid misunderstandings we’ve made a few updates on CancellationPolicies. First of all, we’ve added a new field “Timezone” on Metadata :

In this Timezone (see the Metadata docs to check all possible values) it will specify the timezone in UTC in which the cancellation policies are located.

If you have any doubts about the timezone established by your Seller (for example, if TimeZone is set as Unknown) we advise you to add an offset of +14 hours in order to avoid undesired penalties caused by timezone difference.

Additionally, we’ve added the new Deadline field on CancellationPolicies to give more precise information and avoid losing competitiveness. This field is not subjected to any ambiguity as it’s a date in UTC-0 Standard. The conversion of the date is made according to the value specified on Metadata TimeZone.

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Also, we have added a CalculatedDeadline field to specify if the Deadline has been taken from the Seller’s response or has been calculated by TravelgateX.

Please check the following table for a clear view of how we will treat the Cancellation Policies returned by the Seller according to the TimeZone established on the Metadata:

Why?

The limit in which a booking can be cancelled without penalty is specified on the field HoursBefore. This parameter informs about the maximum hours that could pass before the penalty starts to apply.

Transparency is a fundamental value in our culture and as such we avoid modifying the information provided by our partners. For this reason, hoursBefore value from cancellationPolicies will be returned without adding extra hours and do not take into consideration the Timezone wich Seller works.

What do I need to do?

  • hoursBefore node: TravelgateX returns the information as provided by the Seller - no extra hours added on our side. The logic regarding this information should be managed on your side.

  • deadline node: TravelgateX returns the calculated deadline information - please check above chart. We strongly recommend you use this node.

Timeline:

  • 21st March 2022: Please make sure you check the aforementioned information and update your logic if necessary.
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