What's new?

This month's updates regarding Booking.com direct connection, package pricing in calendar, policy priority management enhancement and preparation for Access Digital Assistant.

Booking.com direct connection

Call for volunteers: Booking.com reservation reporting test.

We’re looking for two hotels to help us test a Booking.com feature within our reservation reporting tool. Specifically, we need live examples of real reservations from hotels that have one or both of the following scenarios:

A guest reservation with an invalid credit card.
A guest stay that requires modification, which can then be reported through the tool.

Some criteria must be met for the stay modification, and our team will provide full guidance and support. If you're interested in volunteering, let us know and we’d greatly appreciate your partnership in testing this functionality.

Some criteria must be met for the guest stay change.

A stay can be changed if:

The guest has already checked in.
The status of the reservation allows modifications.
The reservation is not overbooked.
The property does not use payments by Booking.com or online payments.
The change does not involve setting a new check-out date for a stay whose check-out date was already changed in the last 24-hour period.

The new stay must meet these conditions:

The stay length is at least one night.
If the reservation is non-refundable, the new price must not be lower than the original price.

Package pricing in calendar

The calendar view can now display package pricing, giving guests a broader view of your available offers right from the start of their shopping journey.

This enhancement introduces:

Package support with add-on calculations just as with rate codes, up to five packages can be included for availability searches and displayed in the calendar.
Flexible configuration if both limit calendar rates and limit calendar packages are set, the system will return the lowest available price across selected rate codes and packages.

If a guest chooses a specific package, the calendar will calculate and return only that package’s pricing, maintaining existing behavior.

It is recommended to review your offer structure when enabling this feature—consider how package pricing compares with room rates to ensure the calendar display supports shopper conversion and aligns with your overall selling strategy.

Chain manager - Policy priority management enhancement

As our chain manager functionality continues to evolve, we have now included the priority field for guarantee and cancellation policies.

Upon assigning the policy and priority to individual properties, the following rules will apply:

Policy detail checkbox is unchecked

Existing hotel-level priority settings remains, preserves flexibility at the property level

Policy detail checkbox checked

Chain-level policies override existing hotel-level policy priorities
Provides consistent guarantee or cancellation policy application across your portfolio

Smart conflict management

Multi-property updates: When pushing policies to multiple hotels simultaneously, you'll see update successful if at least one property updates successfully. Any properties that didn't update will display specific warning messages for easy resolution.

The system prevents conflicts by detecting existing priority values at the property level. When a duplicate priority is found:

Warning message identifies the specific hotel and priority number not updated.
No automatic priority reassignment occurs - you maintain full control.

New policies without existing records and not policy from chain are assigned priority 0.

Preparation for Access digital assistant

What's changing: The existing information icons were removed in September. All content has been carefully moved to our knowledge articles over time to ensure you have uninterrupted access to the information you need.

What's coming next: This change paves the way for the Access Digital Assistant - our AI powered in-application support system that delivers help directly within your workflow. This will be implemented for the CRS in the coming months with the CRM and RMS to follow.

The Benefits: Contextual assistance exactly where you're working, eliminating the need to navigate away from your tasks. You'll get faster, more relevant help that keeps you focused on delivering excellent guest experiences.

This upgrade represents our commitment to making your daily operations smoother and more efficient.