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Inventory API

24 Jan, 2020

The connecting property management system (PMS) should use OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQto send availability and restrictions and OTA_HotelRateAmountNotifRQ to send rates and inclusions to Effective Tours API.

General Guidelines for Inventory Updates

These guidelines must be followed by all connecting property management systems.

  • The HotelCode, InvTypeCode, RatePlanCode and RoomTypeCode are codes provided by Effective Tours Channel Manager (they’re fixed/static). These codes can be obtained with a OTA_HotelAvailRQ call.
  • After a reservation is delivered over Effective Tours API into your integrated system (PMS, CRS etc), the integrated system MUST return the new reduced (replenishment in the case of Modify or Cancel reservations) ‘Availability’ value back via the Inventory API.
  • Effective Tours API only allows Inventory Updates for Room/Rate code combinations that are known to Effective Tours (i.e. have been setup and mapped to the PMS within the Effective Tours Channel Manager). Inventory messages (OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQ & OTA_HotelRateAmountNotifRQ ) containing an unmapped Inventory/Rate Code will fail returning Error ‘783’ (check Error Handling for Details)
  • The PMS should send only changes made by the operation performed in the PMS and not full refreshes or other operations. For example if availability changes from 5 to 4, the OTA_HotelAvailNotifRQ should only contain the availability change and no other data/operation (such as Stop Sell or MinLOS).
  • When a hotel is initially connected to Effective Tours API a full refresh should be sent to load up the hotel data. After that only changes should be send and refreshes may only be sent under exceptional circumstances. In the case of a full refresh, the operations should be grouped within the same message.
  • Identical changes in availability should be grouped when possible. I.e if the inventory value for a room changes to 5 for the dates 1st and 2nd of October then one message should be sent to Effective Tours API with the inventory value 5 for the 1st and 2nd of October rather than 2 messages, one for each date.
  • Overlapping date range data is not to be sent in an Inventory message, all date ranges in a singular message should be unique for each room type. 
  • The PMS should be able to resend messages if it is unable to connect to Effective Tours API due to for example schedules outages.

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