Hotel Booking with Guarantee, Deposit, or Pre-Payment

Guarantees, deposits, or pre-payments are payments that may be required to reserve a hotel booking in advance of the hotel stay. These rates must be booked with a deposit. Do not book these rates improperly with guarantee or passing prepayment, as this results in booking failures. For example, passing the value HotelCreateReservationReq/Guarantee/@Type as "PrePayment" returns an error "Guarantee @Type Prepayment not supported."

• Guarantee
  

  A charge is not made to the credit card. Rather, the card number is held against a cancellation that violates the hotel's cancellation policy.

• Deposit
  

  Credit Card: A charge is made to the credit card (typically one night's stay). If the booking is canceled, the deposit is forfeited to the supplier.

  Check: Travelport Universal API has standardized the handling of deposits with a check form of payment for hotel reservations in Worldspan (1P), Galileo (1G), and Apollo (1V). In both the request and response, when a check is used as a deposit, data is sent and returned in the Guarantee element:

  <Guarantee Type="Deposit" >

  <OtherGuaranteeInfo Type="Deposit Taken">CHECK</OtherGuaranteeInfo>

  </Guarantee>

• Pre-Payment
  

  Requires payment at the time of booking for part or all of the hotel stay at the time of booking.

  If the booking is canceled, the amount or availability of a refund varies according to the rules associated with the specified booking code (RatePlanType).

Some hotels do not require a credit card guarantee or deposit. Typically, these hotels will guarantee the room for a specific arrival time, such as 6:00 PM. If the traveler does not check in by the guarantee time, the room will not be held for them.

Request

In addition to the minimum required data for a standard Hotel Booking request, the HotelCreateReservationReq/Guarantee is used to indicate a reservation with a guarantee, deposit, or pre-payment. The required payment type and form of payment for the selected booking code (RatePlanType) is indicated in the previous Hotel Rate and Rule Search or Hotel Rules response.

Note: If a payment is required, but is not provided in the request, an error is returned in the RuleInfo element of the response.

• See Hotel Payment Types: Guarantee, Deposit, and Pre-Pay for more information.

• See Credit Card Form of Payment - Hotel and Vehicle for commonly accepted credit cards for both hotels and vehicles.

Response

The Hotel Booking response (HotelCreateReservationRsp) includes the Universal Record, as well as the Hotel Reservation information for this booking in the HotelReservation element. The guarantee information is stored in the Universal Record and returned in the Hotel Reservation and Universal Record Retrieve responses.

Guarantee, deposit, or pre-payment information used in a booking request may be returned as discrete data in /HotelRateDetail/GuaranteeInfo. Form of payment information for guaranteed Hotel segments is stored locally by Universal API, rather than by the provider.

If a guarantee, deposit, or pre-payment is required for a reservation, a message is returned in the HotelRule/RuleInfo element in the Hotel Booking response or Hotel Rules response.

See Hotel Payment Types: Guarantee, Deposit, and Pre-Pay for details.