Major Update Notification - HotelX Buyers API Amendments

Please be advised that we are releasing an update regarding Hotel-X Buyers API that may affect you.

Major changes

  • Added new query and mutation to be able to add remarks to a booking: amendRemarks

  • Added new query and mutation to be able to amend guests in a booking: amendPaxes

Due to our philosophy of continuous improvement, we are very happy to announce a new update to our Hotel-X Buyers API: We have introduced two new methods in order to allow modifications to already existing bookings made through our Platform.

Amendments

Any type of modification that is enabled on our platform should be carried out in two steps: a query and a mutation.

The first method (from now on, query) is used to make a query to the supplier in order to retrieve the new price of the booking and the cost of confirming the modification, if such cost exists. As an analogy, it would be the same as the Quote method in a booking flow. In addition, the query will provide an amendmentID token to be sent in the second call, which should not be interpreted in any case by the Partner.

The second call (from now on, mutation) is used to confirm the booking modification in the supplier’s system. In the mutation, the amendmentID received in the query response will be sent in order to provide all the required information.

You will find further information and examples about both booking modifications (remarks and guests) in our Documentation.

amendRemarks - Add special requests (remarks) to the booking

Query amendRemarks

The amendRemarks query allows you to query the supplier for information on the new price of the booking and the cost of adding special requests, if any. In order to proceed, you will need to send specific information such as booking details or the remarks to be included.

The response to this query will be common to any type of modification in order for our Partners to be able to integrate with us - its schema will be the same for all types of modification queries, be them to add special requests, modify guests, or any other future modifications that our team is already evaluating, such as dates or meal plans.

As for the response schema, it is worth highlighting the amendFee field, which will indicate the cost of the modification, as well as the amendedBookingDetail, which will show how the reservation will look like once it’s modified (the information to be modified with respect to the original reservation). The amendmentID is a token with all the necessary information for the next step of the modification.

Mutation amendRemarks

The amendPaxes mutation allows us to confirm the modification of the booking to add the special requests for the cost previously informed in the query response. In order to confirm the modification of a booking, we have created a simple and intuitive schema.

In this mutation, the amendmentID received in the previous query is sent and the Partner doesn’t have to worry about anything else since this token already contains all the information required. The mutation response will be almost the same as the one received in the previous step

amendPaxes – How to modify guests from a Booking

The amendPaxes query allows you to query a supplier for information on the new price of the booking and the cost involved, if applicable, of adding/removing/modifying guests from an existing booking.

To make such a modification, the steps will be very similar to the ones explained in the previous section. This time, instead of the special requests, you should send the information of each of the guests that should finally appear in the booking after the modification.

To give some practical examples, if a booking made through our system has a room with two guests, Jack and Rose (as well as their age, surnames, etc.):

  • If you need to change the name of one person: you should send all the information of both guests with the change of name for the person whose name you want to change.

  • if you want to remove Jack from the booking: you should send all the information of the guest who will remain in the booking, i.e. Rose.

  • if you want to add Lisa, a new guest: you should send all the information of Jack and Rose, in addition to Lisa’s.

The mutation schema will be similar to that of amendRemarks, in which the amendmentID will have to be sent so that there is no need to provide any additional information.

We cannot conclude without pointing out that this is the first version of booking modifications and as such, the functionalities and options will increase with additional developments in the near future. In the specific case of guest amendments, this functionality is only allowed for single room bookings and will not be available for bookings with more than one room.

On the other hand, the functionality of this type of modifications is subject to the availability of the type of modification allowed by the supplier’s system. This means that some of the above functionalities may not be available for a provider that we have in our Platform. For example, a provider may only allow guest names modifications but not removing or adding any guests.

So, how can a Partner know the modifications that can be made for each of the modification types? As we commented before, since this is our first version we ask for a little bit of patience - we are working on being able to provide this information through our Metadata query in the future.

We will have the first suppliers integrated to allow booking modifications very soon, so don’t forget to check our communication channels for next updates!

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