Integration overview

Introduction

As one of the world’s largest travel marketplaces for both established brands and entrepreneurs of all sizes, Booking.comenables 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 Rentals United. 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:

  • either by connecting new properties to Booking.com (creates a listing with a single room type and rate in Booking.com)

  • or by mapping existing listings from Booking.com to Rentals United (creates a connection between your property in Rentals United and your listing in Booking.com; you can view and manage multiple room types and multiple rates directly in Rentals United)

In this integration type, the data flow is the following:

  • 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 Rentals United;

  • ARI data is sent to Booking.com automatically upon change registered in the Rentals United system

  • since 2023-02-22, you can turn automatic updates on and have the property descriptive content sent to Booking.com automatically - see details at Automatic listing content update

  • property descriptive content is sent to Booking.com on-demand only - see Updating listings

  • reservations are retrieved from Booking.com every 60 seconds;

  • modifications and cancellations are retrieved from Booking.com for bookings that were made after the connection was already established;

  • extra reservations existing in Booking.com can be copied to Rentals United - Importing bookings.

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.

  • Rentals United hotel or group refers to the room type, e.g. Queen Apartment or Two-Bedroom Apartment and is synchronized as multi-unit. At this point we do not support creating multi-units with multiple room types in Rentals United. If you want to have them, then create them in the Booking.com site and map in Rentals United.

  • Rentals United property refers to a physical room of a certain type, e.g. Property 1 and Property 3 are categorized as Two-Bedroom Apartment.

  • Rentals United 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 Property Settings page.

    Depending on whether your properties are connected to Booking.com from Rentals United or mapped from Booking.com to Rentals United, the way rates are created and displayed in Rentals United platform differs.

    • In case of connecting new properties to Booking.com, Rentals United creates only one standard rate.

    • In case of mapping properties to Rentals United, displaying rates in Rentals United platform 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 Rentals United platform 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 Rentals United 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 Rentals United. 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 Rentals United 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. Rentals United 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. Booking.com offers the Payment by Booking.com solutions - read ore about it here. Note that not all payment solutions are available in all countries or for all property types. For the full list of countries where the solutions are available, reach out to Booking.com.

Below you can see if the Booking.com payment solutions are available in selected countries:

  • Australia: VCC and Bank Transfer

  • India: Not offered

  • Indonesia: VCC and Bank Transfer

  • Malaysia: VCC and Bank Transfer

  • Saudi Arabia: Only VCC

  • Thailand: VCC and Bank Transfer

  • UAE: VCC and Bank Transfer

Length of stay: Booking.com allows to book stays for up to 90 nights. To enable long stays, check in Booking.com Help.

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.