Reservation updateCopy link

The reservation management capability enables lodging partners to

• Cancel a reservation (without penalty) on or before a reservation’s check-in date
• Reconcile a reservation on or after a reservation’s check-in date (23:59 local property time)
• Refund a reservation's rate on or after a reservation’s check-in date (Expedia Collect only)

After the cancelReservation mutation is implemented, the following actions are available to partners on or before a reservation’s check-in date:

• Cancel a reservation as requested by the guest

  A lodging partner can request to cancel a reservation and agree to waive (or refund, if applicable) any cancellation fees and other amounts associated with the reservation. Expedia Group will not charge any compensation for these waived amounts.

• Cancel a reservation if the method of payment is invalid (Hotel Collect only)

  If the credit card provided by the traveler is invalid, the partner can request to cancel the reservation and agree to waive (or refund, if applicable) any cancellation fees and other amounts associated with the reservation. Expedia Group will not charge any compensation for these waived amounts.

In addition, the reservation management capability enables lodging partners to reconcile reservations on or after a reservation’s check-in date as follows:

• Cancel a reservation if the guest does not show up

  A no-show is a guest who fails to arrive on the check-in date without cancelling. After the cancelReservationReconciliation mutation is implemented, partners can mark the reservation as cancelled and reconcile the reservation with our system to specify the penalty amount that the guest was charged. This way, partners can ensure that Expedia Group will charge a commission on the penalty amount that the guest was charged instead of the original amount.

• Cancel a reservation if requested by the guest

  After the cancelReservationReconciliation mutation is implemented, partners can let Expedia Group know whether the guest was charged a cancellation fee after receiving notification that a guest cancelled a reservation. This way, partners can ensure that Expedia Group will charge a commission on the penalty amount that the guest was charged instead of the original amount.

• Update a reservation if the travel dates or daily rates applied to the reservation were modified

  Sometimes a lodging partner needs to charge a guest more or less than the amount that was charged when a reservation was booked, such as if a guest’s length of stay changed. After the changeReservationReconciliation mutation is implemented, the partner can communicate updated stay dates or rates to Expedia Group so that we charge commission on the amount that was charged to the guest.

Lastly, the capability enables partners to refund a reservation's rate if issues arose during the guest's stay by implementing the refundReservation mutation. This allows for goodwill refunds in the case of quality issues or discounts or loyalty perks not being fulfilled. This is supported for Expedia Collect reservations only.

If you intend to implement the reservation update feature, you must implement the reservations query, which enables lodging partners to determine whether reservations are eligible for reconciliation. Partners will not need to rely on error messaging or hard-coded reconciliation criteria in their systems. Instead, they can proactively query for eligibility criteria so that they know exactly which reconciliation actions can be taken.

Implementation detail and limitations

Be mindful of the following as you implement this enhancement:

• To determine if a reservation is eligible for updates, include the reconciliationEligibility object in the reservations query. For Expedia Collect reservations, refunds and date changes are only supported after check-in or if the reservation has not been updated already. (Otherwise, the reservations query will report REFUND or MODIFY_DATES as an invalid scenario in invalidScenarios : scenario).

• Expedia Collect reservations are not eligible for additional updates once they have been cancelled using the cancelReservationReconciliation mutation ("cancel" or "no show"), which would result in an immediate traveler refund. Attempts to modify these cancelled reservations will result in an error.

• For Hotel Collect reservations, you can specify any penalty amount (between 0 and the total booking amount). For Expedia Collect reservations, the penalty amount cannot be greater than the default penalty applied to the reservation at the time of booking. You can validate the business model and cancellation penalties applied to a reservation using the reservations query before attempting to reconcile the reservation.

• Partners should refund the reservation charge to the EVC within 7-14 days after modifying a reservation if they have already fully or partially charged the EVC before modifying the reservation. This will help avoid a chargeback dispute.

• Updates to Expedia Collect and Updated Expedia Collect reservations must meet these requirements:

  • Reconciled within 30 days of the checkout date
  • Payment method is Expedia Virtual Card (EVC) / electronic file transfer (EFT)
  • Bookings made on Expedia Group brands

Be aware of these limitation when implementing the reservation update feature:

• Reconciliation (on or after a reservation’s check-in date) can be performed on Hotel Collect reservations for independently managed properties operating under the Hotel Collect or Expedia Traveler Preference business model. This feature is not available for Hotel Collect Group Reconciliation properties.

• If an Expedia Collect reservation is modified to shorten the length of a stay, rate reductions are not supported (the original booking amount cannot be changed).

• Hotel Collect reservations can be reconciled up to three times when modifying a reservation and only once when cancelling a reservation. (However, partners cannot reset a cancellation using the API; they must use Partner Central to do so). Expedia Collect reservations can be reconciled only once.

Minimum certification requirements

To adopt the reservation update feature, you must successfully complete end-to-end certification with Expedia Group teams. You are expected to confirm reservation update eligibility by retrieving reservations using the reservation retrieval feature (by reservation ID, checkout date, or last updated date and time) and the reconciliationEligibility object.

For pre-arrival cancellation, you must be able to perform following actions:

• Cancel a reservation if the method of payment is invalid (Hotel Collect).
• Cancel a reservation as requested by the guest (Hotel Collect and Expedia Collect).

For reconciliation after the guest arrives, you must be able to perform following actions:

• Cancel a reservation as requested by the guest. In the event of no-show, you must be able to cancel a reservation after the check-in date.
• Update a reservation's stay dates (adding or removing nights) and amounts after the check-in date.
• Inform Expedia Group of the final reservation status regardless of any financial implication, even when the reservation is non-refundable.
• Refund reservation amounts.

You must also display error messages in your user interface (UI).