How to Connect HotelDruid with Online Booking Portals
The users of HotelDruid on the DigitalDruid.net
hosting service have the ability to synchronize availability, prices and reservations with some distribution
channels on the Internet, such as the Booking.com, Venere.com and Expedia.com portals for on-line booking. To
activate the connection between one of these portals and HotelDruid you must first ask the DigitalDruid.Net
hosting support for the login credentials to access the service, normally it will take a few days to get them
from the portal.
These credentials (typically user name and password) can then be inserted into the HotelDruid
interconnections page ("main menu" -> "configure and customize" -> "interconnections") to activate the
interconnection with the portal. On the second page of the interconnection activation you will be asked which
combinations of rooms and rates from the portal you want to connect to HotelDruid rates. So it's recommended,
before activating the interconnection with the portal, to create a new rate for each type of room/rate that is
available on the portal (you can change the number of HotelDruid rates from the "insert prices" page), this way
you will be able to change the availability on the portal by changing the number of rooms associated to these
rates with the assignment rule 2.
Once you have created the interconnection and connected the rates, inform the DigitalDruid.Net support in
order to confirm the successful activation to the portal.
The extra costs are not taken into account in the calculation of prices for the portal, they can only be
used to set a minimum stay (costs associated with a rate from the portal "always in allowed periods", with a
minimum number of days). You can close periods on the portal by setting to zero the prices of the corresponding
HotelDruid rates.
Once activated the interconnection in HotelDruid, whenever you change the prices of a rate associated
with the portal, the prices will be updated on the portal too, as well as each time a reservation is placed in
a room associated to a rate of the portal with rule 2, availability will also be updated on their website. You
can check in the portal backend that prices and availability correspond to the ones inserted in HotelDruid.
Moreover, every time you check availability in HotelDruid, new bookings will be checked for on the portal, and
if found they will be automatically downloaded and added to the HotelDruid database.
If a new reservation on the portal is not downloaded within a short period of time (usually one hour), it
will be sent with other methods, such as a fax, so you must set up a periodic check (every 20 minutes) for new
reservations. For this purpose you have to create a new user ("configure and customize" -> "users management")
and set up his password (you should leave him without privileges), then select him as the "user to remotely
update interconnections" in the interconnections page. When you have done these steps let the DigitalDruid.Net
support know the username and his password, in order to enable the periodic monitoring.