A booking arrives, and is on the chart in the same request
The channel's booking is applied inline — guest, room, price, tax and payer — and the acknowledgement says whether it landed, and if not, why.
When an OTA sells a room, the channel pushes the booking to the hotel. The push is answered in the same request with one of three things: it is on the chart in room such-and-such; it is on the chart waiting for a room because the type is full; or it was refused, with the sentence that says why. "Waiting" no longer means "a timer will get to it".
What is applied
- The guest — matched on name, phone and address together; an address alone is never a person, because OTAs send their own relay address on every booking.
- The room — given from the type's free rooms; if none, the booking sits in its type's lane on the chart, draggable, visible.
- The price — as the channel stated it, per night, with the tax as the channel stated it; a stated tax of zero is a price with the tax inside it.
- The payer — the OTA, if the OTA collected; the guest at the desk, if not. The card says which, and how much is due from whom.
Modifications and cancellations
A modification is not a resend. The change is applied to the stay it belongs to — new dates, new room type, new price — and the stay's timeline says what the channel changed. A cancellation cancels that stay and the room goes back on sale; the no-show the audit marks on a channel booking is reported back to the channel.
A booking refused at the door can come back
A push refused for a key that did not match, or a hotel that was not mapped, is kept whole — every knock at the door is logged, not only the ones we opened — and can be applied afterwards from the log when the cause is fixed.