Blog Detail Title

apaleo's distribution API lets you subscribe for updates on availability, rates and inventory (ARI), create new bookings and modify existing bookings. We built this to make channel manager integrations easy, but it turned out to be neat for reporting applications or revenue management, too.

Before you start, we recommend to check out the end user guide for rate plans.

• The basics
• Setup and configuration
• Getting ARI data
• Send Bookings
• Modify Bookings
• Get certified

The basics

Get your test account and check out this guide to learn how you can connect to the apaleo APIs.

You can find the swagger documentation on https://distribution.apaleo.com/swagger/.

API Client

All apaleo APIs are described as Swagger documents. That lets you generate API clients directly from the swagger.json files. There is a large community, providing client generators for almost every language. For example, swagger code generator is a good project, which allows generation of API clients for Java, PHP, C#, NodeJS and more. This gets you up to speed very fast and as a bonus you can access API documentation within the auto-generated methods and models.

Setup and configuration

Once a hotel successfully connected apaleo the rate plans from apaleo need to be mapped to the ones on your side. We do not store an external rate plan ID, so all the mapping is on your side. One way to simplify this mapping, is to load all rate plans from apaleo, and then make those available when creating or mapping to existing rate plans. That way nobody has to copy-paste any IDs between systems. Neat, right?

You should only load rate plans from apaleo that are mapped to the channel you are using (ChannelManager or BookingCom). Note that we do not support day use rate plan in the distribution APIs.

A rate plan in apaleo is always bound to exactly one unit group (= room category). Each rate plan has a unique ID. When you receive ARI data or when you create a reservation you have to use this unique apaleo rate plan ID. This requires you to map the combination of a rate code and a room code on your side to this ID. See the following example for a simple hotel with 2 room categories and 2 rate codes:

Once this is done, you can subscribe to availability, rates and inventory (ARI) updates for those rate plans.

POST /v1/subscriptions/

Check the documentation in Swagger for the full model, and an example of what to pass. The key field is the endpoint URL. This is the URL we call based on the configured time intervals, to deliver the ARI data. Make sure you protect this endpoint well, as an unprotected endpoint would allow everyone to set prices or availabilities for the hotels. Sounds like trouble. We require https with a valid certificate and some sort of token. The URL also needs to be reachable from apaleo.com. If you're not sure, check with your security or ops team, if any firewalls prevent incoming traffic on (usually) port 443. If so ask to whitelist us. Our outbound IP address is 34.240.36.71.

As a result, you'll get an ID back. Be sure to store this, as you'll need it later on for updating or deleting the subscription. The main reason to update is after a new rate plan is added, and needs to be synchronised.

PUT /v1/subscriptions/

Subscriptions are tied to an API client, so that other applications used by the same apaleo account cannot accidentally interfere with your subscriptions. Again, trouble.

Getting ARI data

Full Push

After you created and enabled the subscription, apaleo will push a full update of all the ARI data to the configured endpoint URL.

Same is happening again each fullSyncPeriod. This is how an example entry looks like:

{
  "accountId": "XYZX",
  "propertyId": "MUC",
  "timeSlices": [ {
    "from": "2018-11-17T09:00:00+02:00",
    "to": "2018-11-18T08:00:00+02:00",
    "ratePlanId": "MUC-NONREF_DBL",
    "unitGroupId": "MUC-DBL",
    "available": 23,
    "prices": [
      {
        "adults": 1,
        "price": {
          "grossAmount": 123,
          "beforeTax": 114.95,
          "afterTax": 129.84,
          "taxes": {
            "vat": 8.05,
            "cityTax": 6.84
          },
          "currency": "EUR"
        }
      },
      {
        "adults": 2,
        "price": {
          "grossAmount": 170,
          "beforeTax": 158.88,
          "afterTax": 179.45,
          "taxes": {
            "vat": 11.12,
            "cityTax": 9.45
          },
          "currency": "EUR"
        }
      }
    ],
    "restrictions": {
      "minAdvanceBookingPeriod": "P1M",
      "maxAdvanceBookingPeriod": "P1M14DT12H",
      "closed": true,
      "closedOnArrival": false,
      "closedOnDeparture": false,
      "minLengthOfStay": 2,
      "maxLengthOfStay": 8
    }
  }]
}

Delta Push

apaleo also keeps track of the data already sent to you for a subscription and calculates the diff. After each deltaSyncPeriod, apaleo sends the data which changed since the last successful update.

To know if an update was successful, we rely on you: Acknowledge successful receptions with a 2xx status code. If you don't, things will get messy, as your truth and our truth will diverge. There's always the full sync to recover from chaos, but better try avoiding it. You can also request a full push, whenever you need it.

PUT /v1/subscriptions/{id}/trigger-full-sync

The delta is calculated for the following fields:

Send Bookings

To create a new booking in apaleo all you need to do is send the the details you have to the Distribution API.

POST /v1/bookings

Each booking will be accepted and confirmed by apaleo. If we cannot process the booking, we will show the failed booking to the hotelier on the user interface and allow the hotelier to resolve the problems. You do not need to worry about errors on our side as long as you ensure the format and URL of your request is correct.

Booking vs. Reservation

In apaleo, the booking is a container for one or more reservations. One reservation is for one room, making a booking basically a 'multi room reservation'. Other systems call those differently: booking.com for example sends multiple rooms as 'room stay elements' in one reservation. You could combine all of them in one booking to apaleo.

Payment Information

apaleo is certified to be compliant with the PCI-DSS standard and we assume you are as well. To achieve compliance, we are using the PCI proxy from DataTrans AG in Switzerland for receiving raw credit card data. For processing payments we are using Adyen N.V. from The Netherlands.

You have two options to pass in payment data into apaleo, which depend on the use case:

1. You receive raw credit card data from a channel. Then just forward this information as credit card with the booking. During implementation you can send test credit cards directly to https://distribution.apaleo.com but you need to use https://secure-distribution.apaleo.com as a base-url whenever you send real credit card data to apaleo in produciton mode. For creating a booking with real credit card data, you would have to call

POST https://secure-distribution.apaleo.com/v1/bookings

2. You have your own booking engine and want to run customers through 3DS for Strong Customer Authentication to help your hotels to benefit from the liability shifting back to the card issuing bank. Then you can use the payment widget on your IBE and forward the card token and transaction details as payment account alongside the booking. Read more about the integration of the payment widget in the IBE Integration Guide. In this case you can the following API:

POST https://distribution.apaleo.com/v1/bookings

Some OTAs collect the money for the hotels or allow other payment methods and then issue a virtual credit card for the hotel to use collecting the money. To allow us to process those cards correctly, please mark virtual credit cards accordingly. Just set the isVirtual property of the credit card or payment account to true.

Channel and Sources

apaleo currently supports two channels: BookingCom and ChannelManager. 'BookingCom' should only be used if your application is  directly connecting booking.com to apaleo. Most likely, you are connecting multiple travel agents or a Central Reservation System (CRS), and should use ChannelManager. When setting ChannelManager as the channel, you have to specify more details in the source. The list of allowed sources you can define right now can be retrieved using the apaleo Booking API. You need to map your sources to the sources allowed in apaleo. You can use the source 'Other' as a fallback, but if you are missing a source in apaleo's list, then please let us know by opening an issue in https://github.com/apaleo/api.

https://api.apaleo.com/booking/v1/types/sources

You need to map your sources to the sources allowed in apaleo. You can use the source 'Other' as a fallback, but if you are missing a source in apaleo's list, then please let us know by opening an issue in https://github.com/apaleo/api.

External ID, your ID, apaleo ID

Distribution channels do have their own booking codes they use to confirm the booking with the guest. Guests use these codes or IDs when they arrive at the hotel, want to check in online or call the hotel. Therefore, this information also needs to be forwarded to apaleo, using the externalId field of a reservation. It is important to make the externalId unique per apaleo account. Would be a bad identifier, if it would not be unique. A simple way to achieve this is appending an incremental number.

You probably also store those reservations, and provide the channels out there and your users to modify and see them. Lastly, apaleo has an ID too, which is generated when a reservation is created in our system. When you create a booking, we return the booking ID, and an ID for every single reservation in it. Your IDs and ours need to mapped, similar to how it is for rate plans. That way you know how to forward modification or cancellation requests to apaleo.

Modify Bookings

The request model for modifications is very similar to the one for creating bookings. Call the following, and pass the apaleo booking ID:

PUT /bookings/{id}

PUT /reservations/{id}/cancel

To make the API easier to use, we decided to deviate from how PUT normally works in two areas:

Undeletable first level objects

The PUT requests basically is a “create or update” request. If you omit one of the fields on the first level, or send an empty object, we will not remove it or cancel it, but pretend you sent the exact data we already have stored. The first level fields are:

• Credit Card
• Booker
• Comment
• Booker Comment
• List of Reservations

This allows you to add a reservation to an existing booking by just sending the new reservation without always having to repeat the data for the booker, the credit card or all the other rooms.

Reservations are identified by the apaleo reservation ID. Reservations without this ID are considered to be new and will be added to the booking. Reservations with an ID will be updated based on the provided information. The API behaves like a “create or update” request.

Merging of guest and booker data

OTAs often do not provide a rich set of data, and a lot of guest-related data is collected by the hotel and put to the guest profile in the property management system (like, apaleo). To not accidentally lose this information we only allow you to override the following fields:

• Guest Data
• Booker Data
• Travel Purpose

If you omit these fields or do send some of their properties empty or not at all, we will not remove it, we will just leave it untouched.

Get certified

General

• How is the flow when connecting a new customer?
• How do you map rate plans?

ARI

• Change Prices, Restrictions and Availability in apaleo and verify the data is received by you
• Are changes to surcharges for extra adults transmitted correctly?
• How are prices for additional services like breakfast synchronised? (if applicable)
• Is information about taxes (afterTax, beforeTax) relevant for you? If yes, how do you use it?

Reservations

• Book a rate plan with an included service
• Book multiple rooms in one booking (e.g. for Booking.com reservations with all room stays)
• Change arrival and departure
• Add rooms to a booking or cancel rooms
• Change guest data for the primary and for additional guests
• Receiving proper number of adults and / or children per room
• Cancel a booking
• Add and remove extras on a reservation
• How do you handle credit cards, including transmission of virtual cards?
• How do you treat exceptions if e.g. you cannot deliver a reservation?