Hotel Rules

A Hotel Rules request supplies booking requirements for rates at a specific hotel property. Hotel availability transactions (Hotel Search and Hotel Rate and Rule Search) may list general rules associated with a hotel property. However, hotel rules lists rule requirements and penalties associated with a specific rate (booking code) at that property.

Because rules at a single property can vary based on the booking code, hotel rules should be viewed, particularly for discounts, promotional offers, or other non-standard rates that may have more stringent requirements.

Checking a property’s rules and requirements can help a traveler to avoid unnecessary confusion, and possibly expense. Hotel rules include information such as:

Whether a credit card number is required to guarantee a room for late arrival.
Credit cards that are accepted by the hotel for guarantee or deposit.
The latest time a traveler can cancel a booking without incurring a no-show charge.
Whether the hotel accept pets, and if so, is there a refundable or non-refundable deposit.
Rate changes during the stay.
More detailed room description information.
Property location and direction information.

Important! Hotel rules are not technically required, although they are recommended as a best practice to provide travelers with the full requirements for the rate. Although this function can be implemented as a stand-alone request, it typically follows a Hotel Rate and Rule Search or Hotel Booking request.

Implementation by Provider

See Exceptions for more information about supported functionality by provider.

Provider	Implementation
Galileo (1G)	Supports Hotel Rules.
Apollo (1V)	Supports Hotel Rules.
Worldspan (1P)	Supports Hotel Rules.

Schema

See the following transactions for Hotel Rules:

Request

HotelRulesReq in the HotelService is used to request hotel rule details. The minimum request for hotel rules includes the check-in and check-out dates, booking code (room rate), the RoomMaster Property ID, and the number of travelers.

When the HotelReservationLocatorCode is provided in the request, and a BookingConfirmation is present in the Hotel reservation, the response returns the rules that are applicable for the actual days of the reservation, if the supplier provides them. If the Hotel supplier confirmation is not available, the rules returned are for the current day's date.

Additional modifiers can also be added to a hotel rules request. See Hotel Rules Modifiers for details.

Response

The response is returned in HotelRulesRsp.

Depending on the participation level of the hotel supplier, the response data is returned either from the provider's cached data or from the supplier's database.

HotelType

The Travelport Universal API™ providers support different levels of participation for data sources. For Galileo (1G) and Apollo (1V) providers, participation levels include:
- Inside Availability which links directly from the supplier’s system.
- Link Partner connection, which returns cached rates from Travelport’s RoomMaster system but confirms them through a direct link with the supplier. Participating RoomMaster suppliers regularly upload hotel rates and information to RoomMaster.
- RoomMaster Only, which returns cached data from RoomMaster.
If a direct link between the provider and the supplier is temporarily disabled, Galileo and Apollo return data from RoomMaster. However, the Participation Level indicator (HotelProperty @ParticipationLevel) continues to indicate the default link connection, and does not change if the direct link is temporarily disabled.

The Boolean SourceLink attribute for Hotel Description and Hotel Rules responses to indicate if the description or rules data is returned directly from the hotel supplier’s system.
- If HotelType SourceLink=”true”, response is received as Inside Availability directly from the hotel supplier.
- If HotelType SourceLink=”false”, cached data from RoomMaster is received in the response.
This capability allows customers to identify content returned in the response as being from either the Hotel Supplier (via Inside Availability links with the Supplier) or from Room Master.
The Source Link indicator is not returned for Hotel responses other than Hotel Description and Hotel Rules, such as Hotel Search, Hotel Rate and Rule Search, and Hotel Booking responses.

HotelRateDetail

The Base and Total for room rates, returned in HotelRateDetail and HotelRateDetail/HotelRateByDate, are not calculated by Universal API because they cannot be guaranteed to be accurate.
HotelRateDetail/TaxDetails for tax tables, taxes, surcharges, and fees, are explained further in the Hotel Taxes and Fees topic.
A Commission indicator and discrete commission data is returned in HotelRateDetail/RoomRateDescription/ when available. Commissions are usually a percentage of the base stay rate (not including tax or surcharges).

CancelInfo

Sometimes a hotel supplier may provide an indicator for a hotel room rate that is non-refundable or that has additional cancellation information room plan type.

The CancelInfo element is used to return this cancellation information for Galileo and Apollo suppliers that participate in Complete Pricing Plus (CP2). The CancelInfo element attributes may be populated in both Hotel and Universal Record responses if data is provided by a hotel supplier.

@NonRefundableStayIndicator and @CancelDeadline are discrete data for Worldspan in Hotel Rate and Rule Search only. Previously, Worldspan returned free-text data in HotelDetailRsp/RequestedHotelDetails/HotelRateDetail/RoomRateDescription @Name @Text. When applicable, Worldspan continue to return free text in addition to the @CancelDeadline value:

RoomRateDescription Name="Cancel Policy Exist" Text="Please reference the Cancellation Policy in Hotel Rules"

Show Attributes

Attributes	Definition
@NonRefundableStayIndicator	Returned from hotel room rate. true = non-refundable false = refundable unknown = unknown or not provided by hotel.
@CancelDeadline	YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM The date and time to cancel the hotel reservation without penalty. All dates and times are local to the hotel property. blank or not present = unknown or not provided by hotel
@TaxInclusive	Shows if the cancellation penalty includes taxes. True = yes False = no blank or not present = unknown or not provided by hotel.
@FeeInclusive	Shows if the cancellation penalty includes extra fees. True= yes False=no blank or not present= unknown or not provided by hotel.
@CancelPenaltyAmount	If provided, returns the ISO three-character currency code and value amount with decimal. For example, CAD100.00. blank or not present= unknown or not provided by hotel.
@NumberOfNights	The number of nights that are charged as the cancellation penalty. For example: 3. Integer: 0 – 99 blank or not present= unknown or not provided by hotel.
@CancelPenaltyPercent	Percentage of booking that will be charged as the cancellation penalty. For example: 100. Integer: 1 – 999 blank or not present = unknown or not provided by hotel.
@CancelPenaltyPercentAppliesTo	Explanation of the cancellation penalty percent. Text. 0-64 characters. blank or not present = unknown or not provided by hotel.
@OffsetTimeUnit, @OffsetUnitMultiplier, @OffsetDropTime	Indicate the deadline time associated with a cancellation. More Information The following attributes were added to CancelInfo to indicate the time period of the deadline either after booking or before arrival at the hotel stay. @OffsetTimeUnit: "Year”, “Month”, “Day”, or “Hour”. @OffsetUnitMultiplier: The number of units for the deadline. @OffsetDropTime: "AfterBooking" or "BeforeArrival". For example: <CancelInfo NonRefundableStayIndicator="true" OffsetTimeUnit=”Week” OffsetUnitMultiplier=”2” OffsetDropTime=”BeforeArrival”/> Cancellation is non-refundable after two weeks before arrival at the hotel stay. Offset time is returned only for Galileo (1G) and Apollo (1V). Offset time is not returned for Worldspan (1P).

The RoomRateDescription element provides hotel property information.
Smoking or non-smoking room.
- @Name ="SmokingRoomIndicator"
- @Text: "N" = NonSmoking, "Y" = Smoking, Blank = null
For Galileo and Apollo, information may be provided in a Miscellaneous node. For Worldspan , the Miscellaneous node is parsed and information is returned in separate, identifiable nodes.
Show more information
Previously, Worldspan was returning duplicate property description data for Hotel Rules responses. This data varies by supplier, but typically includes data such as policy and cancellation details, facilities and services information, and marketing campaigns and incentives.

In HotelRateDetail/RoomRateDescription Name="Miscellaneous", the property descriptions were returned as free text. The same text data was also parsed as defined data:
- In Hotel Rules (HotelRulesRsp), discrete data is returned in HotelRuleItem. For example:
  
  <hotel:HotelRuleItem Name="CheckIn (03)">
  
  <hotel:Text>15 00</hotel:Text>
- This update removes the duplicate Name="Miscellaneous" free-text data in HotelRateDetail/RoomRateDescription, and only returns the parsed versions of the data in HotelRuleItem.
In addition, hard-coded keywords were removed from the 1P interface with Universal API. Previously, this hard coding resulted in the return of only a limited set of keyword-defined property description data. With this enhancement, all available property description data is returned.

Errors

If the number of children modifier is not supported by a particular vendor, the response returns the error message: Number of Children not supported by CC, where CC is the hotel chain code.