Error handlingCopy link

Errors occurring at the acknowledgement level will be reported as a negative acknowledgment using a Fault element. Errors occurring afterwards should be communicated to Expedia by returning an OTA response with the "Errors" element in it. If Expedia Group receives a Nack on the request post, Expedia Group will perform a retry.

Since Expedia Group bookings are guaranteed, in most cases you should accept the booking notification and return a confirmation number. You can only reject the notification for a limited number of reasons, which correspond to the list of error codes defined by this API.

In general, you can reject the notification if mandatory data elements or attributes are missing or some elements or attribute have invalid values according to this specification. However, we encourage you to build your interfaces to handle as many exceptional cases as possible by putting the notification into your systems and returning positive responses with confirmation numbers. The goal is to reduce the number of emails resulting from failed notifications because in the end, one way or another, the notification will be entered in your systems.

The only acceptable errors in the OTA content that may justify an error response message concern the guest name, the check-in or check-out date, the property ID, the room type code, the rate plan code, number of guests, and for modification and cancellation requests, the original supplier confirmation number.

Only a response with a confirmation number is considered a successful notification. Otherwise, Expedia Group will consider the notification failed, and a email notification will be sent to you.

Connectivity errors

These errors are reported when communication disruption occurs between Expedia Group and your software.

To avoid issues with certificate signing authorities, anyone developing in Java should use version 1.4.2_13 or newer.

If you prefer to use an older version of Java or an in-house SSL library, you will need to import the Entrust CA certificate.

• Entrust CA common name CN = Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048).
• To manually import the Entrust.net Certification Authority (2048) Certificate, download the CA certificate.

Error flow 1: Nack for request

Initial condition: you are not able to read the request header or the request header is not valid or you cannot store the request message.

Final condition: Expedia Group received a negative acknowledgement. After a retry delay Expedia Group will resend the request with retry indicator set to "true" until a response is received or maximum number of retries is reached. Expedia will retry until the expiration time is reached. If Expedia Group cannot get a valid response, the notification will be flagged as "failed", and then automatically fall back to email.

Error flow 2: No response for request

Initial condition: Expedia Group is not able to read the response you returned for the request post, or not able to get a response before a connection timeout.

Final condition: after a retry delay, Expedia Group will resend the request with retry indicator set to "true" until an Acknowledgement/Response is received or expiration time of the notification is reached.

If Expedia Group cannot get a valid response after the maximum number of retries, the notification will be flagged as "failed", and then automatically fall back to email.

Error flow 3: Error response

Initial condition: you are not able to process the request. You reject the notification by sending back a response with the appropriate error message indicating why the request cannot be processed.

You can only reject the notification for a limited number of reasons. The error codes allowed in booking notification responses are listed in the section below. Expedia Group will automatically send failed bookings by email if you return a negative response.

Final condition: Expedia Group received a response with OTA error. The notifications will automatically fallback to email when a response with OTA error is received.

Notification identifier

A notification is identified by a RequestID. For booking notification, this ID is generated by Expedia Group and Expedia Group guarantees the ID is unique in all notifications sent by Expedia Group.

This ID is mandatory in all message requests and responses. You must return the RequestID in the response message with the same value sent in the request by Expedia Group.

Sample error message

A sample error response message for the error scenarios above.

1<soap-env:Envelope xmlns:soap-env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
2  <soap-env:Header>
3        <Interface xmlns="http://www.newtrade.com/expedia/R14/header" Name="ExpediaDirectConnect" Version="4.0">
4            <PayloadInfo RequestId="33196136" RequestorId="Expedia.com" ResponderId="PartnerID" Location="Body">
5                <CommDescriptor SourceId="PartnerID" DestinationId="ExpediaDC" RetryIndicator="false">
6                    <Authentication Username="user" Password="pass"/>
7                </CommDescriptor>
8                <PayloadDescriptor Name="OTA_HotelResNotifRS">
9                    <PayloadReference SupplierHotelCode="OH167" DistributorHotelId="18827"/>
10                </PayloadDescriptor>
11            </PayloadInfo>
12        </Interface>
13    </soap-env:Header>
14    <soap-env:Body>
15        <OTA_HotelResNotifRS EchoToken="33196136" TimeStamp="2007-06-29T15:57:48-07:00" Target="Production" Version="2.000" PrimaryLangID="en-us" ResResponseType="Ignored" xmlns="http://www.opentravel.org/OTA/2003/05">
16            <Errors>
17                <Error Language="en-us" Type="3" ShortText="3203" Code="450">The Room Type Code is missing or invalid</Error>
18            </Errors>
19        </OTA_HotelResNotifRS>
20    </soap-env:Body>
21</soap-env:Envelope>

Nack error codes

Error codes for Nack are generated by your system upon receiving the Booking Notification request from Expedia Group.

After receiving a Nack error from you, Expedia Group will retry to send the request until a response (success or OTA error) is received or the maximum number of retries is reached. Expedia Group will retry the message until it expires.

Response message error codes

Upon receiving one of these error responses, the notification will fall back to email notification automatically. This means that Expedia Group will send the notification to you by email. Request messages that receive these errors will not be retried.

For mapping errors (error codes 3202, 3203, and 3204), whether an error needs to be actioned by you or Expedia Group depends on who is responsible for the mapping.

Error codes in reporting

Some connection errors or malformed responses can result in an error code being generated and logged by Expedia; these will only show in the error reporting sent by Expedia. The below table references such codes. These do not have to be coded to as they will never appear in the notification RQ/RS.