Reservation processing

Request-to-book

Rentals United allows you to set the booking policy for your listings. You can select the booking mode for each individual hotel upon pushing it to Booking.com. You can choose between Instant book and Request to book. The step-by-step instructions are here. Request-to-book flow is offered globally by Booking.com .

When the booking mode is set to Request to book, no instant bookings are possible. The guest will see the Request to book option in Booking.com. After they book your property via Request to book, you will receive a booking request in Rentals United (it will be marked in a blue colour). This booking will not block your calendar’s availability yet. You have 24 hours to confirm or decline a booking request. You can use this time for the guest verification purposes, for example.

Booking requests can be confirmed or declined in the Rentals United platform and via API. You can see the step-by-step instructions on how to confirm and decline requests via API here.

Confirm a request

1. Open Guest Planner and find the request you wish to confirm. Requests have a blue label and are in the Request status.

   

   Booking.com requests do not include guest details. This is due to the Booking.com policy to avoid bookings made outside the platform. Instead, in the reservation comments they provide additional details, which may help you verify the guest, such as time the guest joined Booking.com or whether it is a verified user. Reservation comments include important information about the reservation status and actions taken.

   

2. Click the Accept this request button. The status changes now to Approved.

   

3. Wait for the guest's action. The guest has 24 hours to confirm the booking.

   • If the guest completes the booking within the indicated time, the request will become a Confirmed reservation.

   • If the guest does not complete the booking process, the request will change its status to Expired after the indicated time passes.

   Note: Requests to book from Booking.com additionally have an expiry date on top of the comments section. It means the request cannot be confirmed or rejected after the indicated time passes.

Reject a request

1. Open Guest Planner and find the request you wish to confirm. Requests have a blue label and are in the Request status.

   

2. Click the Reject this request button.

   

3. A pop-up displays. From the dropdown, select the reason for rejection. In some cases, you need to provide an additional explanation. Confirm by clicking Reject this request.

   

4. The request will change its status to Rejected.

Inserting reservation manually

It is always possible to insert reservation manually in Rentals United Guest Planner or from the Bookings tab. In such a case, the availability is blocked and the channel is updated.

Reservation details

When a reservation is received, Booking.com provides us with the standard guest personal data (name, surname, phone number etc.) and booking details (property name, number of guests, date, price). Some channels also include additional information. All these details can be accessed in Guest Planner > Big Card or via API methods used to retrieve reservations, for example Pull_ListReservations_RQ.

Item	More info
Guest number	Booking.com shares information about: Number of guests in one reservation (total) Number of adults Number and age of children Number of guests on one property

Importing bookings

In case you worked with Booking.com and received bookings prior to connecting to it via Rentals United, it is possible to import them into Rentals United to ensure all information is in one place.

Bear in mind that this is a one-time action that is supposed to import bookings which were created before you have started using Rentals United or connected to Booking.com. Any new bookings will be automatically created in , without any need to manually import them.

1. In Rentals United platform, go to the Services tab.

   

2. Select the proper list to search for Booking.com.

   

   • Find Services lists the channels you are not yet connected to,

   • My Services lists the channels which you have already established connection with and channels that are in the process of being connected.

3. Type the Booking.com name in the search box or scroll down through the list of available channels.

4. Unfold the Booking.com section by clicking the Down arrow button.

5. Click the Property Settings button.

   

6. Find the hotel you would like to import bookings for. Hover the mouse over the three-dot menu on the account level. Click Import Booking.com bookings.

   

   Note: You can import bookings for the whole hotel only. This means it will import bookings from all listings added to one hotel. If you have more hotels, you need to repeat it for each of them.

7. Confirmation pop-up is displayed. Click Proceed & Import to continue.

8. The process is initialized. Do not exit the page until it is finished. Depending on the number of bookings you have in your account, it may take a while to complete. Once the bookings import is complete, the page will reload. Please, verify if new bookings were successfully copied to Rentals United. You can do it directly through Guest Planner. If the process was not successful, you will see an error. In this case, try again. If the error persists, please contact the Rentals United Support Team.

   Note: If some of your seasons are blocked in Rentals United and you import bookings, these imported bookings will be placed within the blocked periods anyway. They may show up as overbookings. This is only a visual issue and there's nothing to worry about.

For reservations that were created in Booking.com before the hotel was connected to Quick Connect, it is only possible to get the following data from Booking.com::

• rent price

• dates

• guest name

• meal plan

Especially, it is not possible to get additional information:

• detailed price breakdown

• payment info (e.g. card number)

• special requests (information about children)

• guest contact details

• commission