This is a two-phased approach, phase 1 being bookings/initiate, phase 2 being bookings/confirm. A booking that is initiated will automatically cancel if no confirmation is made within 10 minutes. If a line item is Initiated but not Confirmed, it will not be visible to the Hotelier in SAMS.
The booking will be made using this process:
A full availability check is made using Nexus interface.
We also offer inventory_id where resellers can pass Room-A. Rooms that then include Room-A in it's response indicate that they can fit the occupancy searched for.
The customer decides to purchase this property (and other third party elements).
Resellers initiate the booking using the bookings/initiate endpoint. We require dates, property ID, room ID, rate or offer ID, occupancy, ages, customer name, email, customer ISO country.
A successful response will return the Mr & Mrs Smith OBX reference
Please note that customer email needs to be unique each time - many of our partners generate unique emails to pass through at this stage
A pending booking is Initiated in SAMS.
Other third parties have pending reservations created (optional).
Resellers confirming bookings will need to provide Mr & Mrs Smith OBX reference as well as the Reseller's reference (vendor reference)
The pending booking is confirmed at SAMS (along with the reseller’s other third party bookings).
Once booked, a bookings/lineitemsbybookingreference API request should be made to collect details of any incorporated mandatory extras, such as seaplane transfers, extra beds and cots.
We do not require the customer email when booking, however we do require an email to be passed at the intitiation stage. Please pass through a unique stub email at this stage.
All customer payments are made to the reseller directly. Smith will invoice the reseller for the sale price (which equals the net rate plus the Smith commission). All reseller bookings will be marked as pre-paid. The Hotelier will be able to use our virtual credit card in order to access funds, as per our current processes.
The reseller will cancel over the API, using the bookings/cancel endpoint. SAMS will send the reseller a cancellation confirmation in the response. SAMS will notify the hotelier of the cancellation.
If a line item is cancelled when in Initiated status, no cancellation penalties are due, but the availability is unbooked. The Hotelier will not be notified as the booking never reached a confirmed status.
A cancellation penalty may be charged, depending on the booked rate type or offer’s particular setup. The Smith cancellation policy for each booked room can be retrieved by the bookings/lineitemsbybookingreference API call. Cancellation fee payments will need to be manually invoiced to start with.
It is important that the reseller implements an appropriate caching strategy for any requests that are not related to Nexus or bookings. The information on properties, rate types, offers and room type can be cached for short periods of times and updated based on the results of a propertiesChangedSince API request. Please do not cache rates or availability.