Frequent Asked Questions

What does PMS mean?

Property management systems also known as PMS or Hotel Operating System (Hotel OS). They are computerized systems that facilitate the management of properties, personal property, equipment, including maintenance, legalities and personnel all through a single piece of software. They replaced old-fashioned, paper-based methods that tended to be both cumbersome and inefficient. They are often deployed as client/server configurations. Today, most next generation property management systems favour web and cloud technology and offer their software to clients using a software-as-a-service model.

What does OTA mean?

OTA stands for Online Travel Agency. Examples of OTAs are Booking.com Expedia.com HRS.com etc.

What does OBE mean?

OBE stands for Online Booking Engine. I’t is the tool used by hotels to create a booking platform o their brand.com website.

Where can I find my API key?

The API Key and password will be handed out by your Smarthotel contact person. You are not able to find it here on this website.

Do i also need HTTP header authentication?

Yes, also a HTTP header is required. Name and value will be provided by Smarthotel. More information can be found on the endpoints page.

What is occurrence?

The occurrence column in the specifications determine which information is mandatory or optional. The possible values and their description can be found in this table.

What is the difference between a room and a room plan?

A room can consist of more room plans. The sum of the availability of all room plans in one room will be distributed as the availability for that room to a connected OTA.

How is a room plan identified?

If you set the InvCodeApplication to InvGroupingCode we will see InvTypeCode as the ID of a room plan. If InvCodeApplication is omitted then we will see InvTypeCode as the ID of a room.

What is the difference between a rate and a rate plan?

With a rate plan, multiple rates can be calculated with a little help of a weight. The rate will be distributed to the OTA. Smarthotel recommends PMS systems to develop based on a rate plan level as this will decrease the traffic between the PMS and the channel manager.

What occupancy can be handled in the channel manager?

In the OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfoRS for OBE and PMS specs there are several possibilities for the attributes MinOccupancy and MaxOccupancy. In below schema you can find the possible occupancy for a room based on the MinOccupancy and MaxOccupancy.

Please refer to below table to find the exact possibilities:

What are rate types and which are available?

The rate type will define what kind of rate this rate code is.

There are several values:

• Base rate: Calculated rates will be calculated from the base rate.
• Default: This is the standard setting for a rate code.
• Calculated: This rate will be calculated from the base rate.
• Best bar by day: Rate type used for specific setup with RMS systems
• No R&A update: This rate will not send any messages to an OTA.

What is not OpenTravel about the specifications?

• TPA_exentions: A placeholder in the schema to allow for additional elements and attributes to be included per Trading Partner Agreement (TPA). Allows extensions to be added to the OpenTravel specification per trading partner agreement. This is integrated to work with RatePlans as mentioned in the OTA specifications in the OTA_HotelRatePlanRS.

How does the certification look like?

After building the connection, the certification process will take place.

This will take up around 60 minutes.

During the certification each step implemented will be tested and approved or disapproved.

When something is not correct, this needs to be adjusted and we will plan a new moment to do the certification.

When all is approved, you are certified and we can proceed to run the first pilot on production.