Booking.com: FAQ
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the Booking.com integration app.
Why can’t I change the Booking.com property type in the property settings?
If you have set up your booking.com property as a Hotel, Campsite, or Holiday Park, you cannot switch to Apartment, Villa, Chalet, or Holiday home without first deleting all but one of your connected types.
This is because the first three property types mentioned allow for multiple listings (PMS types) to be managed together, all with the name and address data of your administration settings. The others are meant for single accommodation listings with their own address. They allow only one listing (PMS type), with a single object. The name and address data (among other things) are also taken from the type settings, not the administration settings.
Switching from 'Holiday Park' to 'Campsite' will cause no issues, because both of these allow for multiple connected types and objects.
Similarly, switching from 'Chalet' to 'Holiday home' will cause no issues either, the location data will still be the PMS type address.
Why can’t I delete a linked type?
If your Booking.com property is a single-accommodation property, i.e. an Apartment, Villa, Chalet, or Holiday home, you cannot delete the only type listed. What you can do, is delete the entire property, and create a new one if needed.
If your Booking.com property is a multi-accommodation property, i.e. a Hotel, Campsite, or Holiday Park, you can delete a type only after certain conditions have been met.
The type must be deactivated in the integration app, and cannot have any future Booking.com reservations on it.
If you cannot find the 'Delete' option in the property management page, open the type management page (room ID) and see if it is present among the options under the button in the top right corner.
How do I delete a rate plan?
For now, Booking.com rate plans can only be deleted by logging in to your Booking.com account and managing your rate plans there.
Rate plans cannot yet be properly managed within BEX PMS. For this same reason, you can only apply new rate plans in the integration app after first creating them in your Booking.com account. The default rate plan connected to newly created room IDs (connected types) is Booking.com’s default.
What is the safety margin?
The safety margin in the Booking.com app settings serves to minimise the risk of double bookings.
In the synchronization of availability between Booking Experts and this channel, the number of available objects per type per day is transmitted. This does not contain any information about which objects these are exactly. This could lead to the following situation:
The channel sees that there is 1 available object on three consecutive days. This corresponds to the availability in Booking Experts, but on the Planboard it is clear that this is a different object on each of the three days. Existing reservations with various arrival and departure dates have booked the other dates. The channel does not know this, and sells a three-day stay. This creates a problem for you, because you do not have an object that is available for three consecutive days.
A safety margin of 1 object per day ensures that the availability passed on to the channel is 1 less than what is actually available. This significantly reduces the chance of the above scenario occurring. If a type only contains 1 object, this safety margin is not applied.
How are reservations processed via Booking.com?
When your guest makes a reservation via Booking.com, they have an overview of the various costs that are included in the price or will be invoiced. This depends on your pricing and synchronization settings.
Note that your guests cannot indicate through Booking.com if they are bringing a pet.
After making a reservation, the guest receives a confirmation from both Booking.com and your PMS administration. If the guest should pay you directly, your confirmation message also includes a payment link.
Note that Booking.com doesn’t provide you with the guest’s actual email address, the email address linked to the reservation is generated by Booking.com and acts as a pass-through. If desired, you can set up an auto email to ask Booking.com guests for their email addresses.
In all other aspects, a Booking.com reservation is exactly the same as any other reservation.
Why is there a price difference with Booking.com?
If the price of the reservation you received from Booking.com differs from what your own PMS states, this may have several causes.
Always check first whether you have enabled discounts in your Booking.com account, such as a Genius discount. These discounts are not passed on to your PMS administration. You have to either disable the discounts in your Booking.com account, or manually add this discount to the reservation.
Check whether your pricing settings and costs are set up correctly for this channel.
Take into account whether you are using basic rent prices or all-in prices, because this affects how costs are handled. Are costs set to be included or excluded in the channel settings? If you are using basic rent, this should be set to excluded, while for all-in prices it should be included.
If you have a cost that you want your guest to pay upon arrival, even when you use all-in prices, you can edit this cost to be excluded. Edit the cost item, and in the 'invoicing' section, under 'other settings', you tick the box 'Do not include in all-in prices'. Be sure that this cost does appear on the guest invoice, not the channel invoice, by marking it as such in the channel settings. Read more about how to do this: Costs on guest- or channel invoice
Why can’t guests book for a stay of more than 30 days?
The maximum number of consecutive nights per stay that can be booked through Booking.com is 30 nights. This is not extendable, it is a hard limitation of the integration between BEX PMS and Booking.com.