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Frequently asked questions about the Rates & Availability API

This FAQ answers some common questions related to the Rates & Availability API.

You can find information regarding the mandatory functionalities and restrictions you need to support before going live with the Rates and Availability API integration in the article in Connectivity Hub under the Rates & Availability API requirements section.

How are rooms, rates, and occupancy configured and handled on Booking.com?

Firstly, all room types have a room capacity which refers to the number of adults that can stay in a room. The number of beds configured for each room mostly validates this criterion.

For roomrate occupancy, a roomrate is typically calculated for the maximum number of adults that can stay in a room. We can also interpret this as the price of a room, regardless of how many guests are staying. This is what we refer to as Standard Pricing.

While occupancy pricing (including Single use pricing, Derived pricing, Rate Level Occupancy pricing and Occupancy-based Pricing) all refer to a number of adults up to and including the maximum occupancy. Setting up occupancy pricing allows the property to set different prices or pricing rules for different number of guests.

Lastly, child occupancy serves as an add-on to adult occupancy. It allows a predefined number of children to be added on top of the existing adult occupancy. It is important to note that in our system, child occupancy is not an actual occupancy. Therefore, it doesn’t follow any rules, constraints or logic that relies on the number of persons.

Why am I getting the PRICE_EXCEEDS_MAX_PRICE and PRICE_BELOW_MIN_PRICE errors?

Sometimes you might get the errors PRICE_EXCEEDS_MAX_PRICE or PRICE_BELOW_MIN_PRICE when you're sending price updates. You can check the following reasons:

PRICE_EXCEEDS_MAX_PRICE: You’re trying to load prices higher than €50,000 (or the equivalent in the property local currency).

PRICE_BELOW_MIN_PRICE: You’re trying to load prices lower than €5 (or the equivalent in the property local currency).

I keep getting the INVALID_USE_OF_SINGLE_OCCUPANCY error, why can't I push this rate?

When Rate level Occupancy pricing (RLO) is applied with a fixed occupancy set other than 1 occupancy, single use price updates will be rejected with error INVALID_USE_OF_SINGLE_OCCUPANCY.

Activating Single Use is only possible on request. We recommend asking the property to get in touch with the local support team.

What is Rate Rewrite?

Rate Rewrite is a product that helps properties create rates that are based on a parent rate. Rates set up this way are called child rates, and each one has a unique rate ID.

Rates can have one of three configurations:

  • XML Default Rates – connectivity providers map, update and retrieve reservations made using these rates
  • XML Res Rates – properties manage these rates in the extranet, but connectivity providers retrieve reservations made using these rates
  • No XML Rates – properties manage them in the extranet, and Booking.com delivers reservations made using them to the property via notification emails

For XML Res Rates that have a rate rewrite, the rate IDs are not included in the mapping call when calling the following endpoints:
- POST /xml/roomrates v.1.1 endpoint with support_rate_rewrite specified as 1 - GET OTA_HotelProductNotif endpoint with SupportRateRewrite specified as 1

Connectivity providers can’t update the rate value of an XML Res Rate child rate, because it’s derived from a parent rate.

You can get rate rewrite related extra information using the feature Get extra information for reservations (res_extra_info). For more information, take a look at Get extra information: Rate rewrite for OTA and Include extra information for BXML.

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