Understanding the Contracting API¶
The Contracting API enables you to efficiently participate in and keep track of the contracting process of your Accommodation Partners.
What is contracting?¶
For an Accommodation Partner's property to become open and bookable, the Accommodation Partner must sign a contract with Booking.com.
To start building a property with HotelDescriptiveContentNotif you must first provide either of the following:
- Legal entity id (LEID): Specifies the unique Booking.com id of an Accommodation Partner.
- Legal contact email: Specifies the email of the Accommodation Partner's legal contact with Booking.com.
One-to-one relationship between LEID and legal contact email
Every LEID has a one-to-one relationwhip with a legal contact email in the Booking.com system. This means you cannot use the same email to create more than one LEID.
Contracting for all countries¶
Accommodation Partners have to sign a contract that includes all the countries they have properties in. If an Accommodation Partner has already signed a contract and wants to add a property in an additional country, they must sign the contract again for the new country. The Contracting API enables you to add a new country that also triggers an email to the Accommodation Partner with a link to the Booking.com contracting tool Booking.com uses.
Two contracting flows¶
Which flow you use depends on how actively you want to participate in the contracting process. Look at the following two main flows to understand what can work best for you:
- Legal entity id first flow: This flow uses only the Contracting API.
- Build first flow (with legal contact email): This flow uses the build first contracting flow feature and some of the Contracting API functionalities.
→ To switch on the contracting feature, see the Accommodation Partner build first contracting flow feature on the feature management page.
Legal entity id first¶
To understand how to use the legal entity id flow, look at the following diagram and descriptions:
Build first¶
To understand how to use the build first flow, look at the following diagram and descriptions:
What is possible with the Contracting API?¶
On a high level, the Contracting API enables you to:
- Send legal details of Accommodation Partner (AP) to create a legal entity id and send an email to AP with link to Booking.com contracting tool.
- Check whether AP has signed the contract with Booking.com.
- Resend email to AP with link to Booking.com contracting tool.
- Retrieve basic legal details AP: Legal entity ID, contract signed status, and countries in which the AP has properties.
Why use the Contracting API?¶
Using the Contracting API greatly helps you to simplify the contracting process.
Main URL and use of shortened endpoint paths¶
The Contracting API's main URL is https://supply-xml.booking.com/contracts-api. All shortened endpoint paths imply that you must add the main URL. For example: /partners/legal-details becomes https://supply-xml.booking.com/contracts-api/partners/legal-details in an actual request.
Authentication¶
Contracting API uses the same [authentication methods][authentication] as other APIs.