Easy tips to solve the most common errors in the Rates and Availability API

This article is designed to help you understand, solve and prevent the most common and impactful errors you might encounter when using the Rates and Availability API. We’ve found that the solutions below can immediately decrease Rates and Availability errors by up to 30%. We recommend implementing these routine actions in your system if you haven’t already. That way you’ll be able to provide an even better experience to your partners.

We’re focussing on Rates and Availability  because these updates are the basis of the best performance of our property partners.

RATE_NOT_ACTIVE_FOR_ROOM

What does it mean?

The specified rate is not being mapped to the specified room, and Booking.com has not received an active rate for the room.

What should I do?

Ask the property to activate the rate for the room on Booking.com, or stop sending updates for this room and rate combination.

How do I avoid this error?

The best way to avoid this error is to use the roomrates call regularly. The more a provider uses the roomrates call, the less likely they are to receive the error code.

The roomrates call tells you whether a rate is mapped to a room on our side. If it isn’t, you can send a message to the property asking them to manually adjust the setting in either your system or the Booking.com extranet. This Partner Help article explains how. Alternatively, you could use the section for managing rooms and rates from the Content API to modify a room setup.

I don’t use the Content API – can I still resolve this error?

Rates can be activated and deactivated by partners directly in the extranet. Alternatively, properties can reach out to their local Partner Services team to reactivate an inactive rate category. If the property doesn’t want the rate plan to be reactivated, you’ll need to stop sending prices to the inactive rate plan.

RATE_NOT_ACTIVE or ROOM_NOT_ACTIVE

What does it mean?

The rate or room is no longer active on our side. That means it’s been completely deactivated.

What should I do?

Ask the property to activate the rate or the room on Booking.com, or stop sending updates for this room and rate combination.

How do I avoid this error?

The best way to avoid this error is to use the roomrates call regularly. The more a provider uses the roomrates call, the less likely they are to receive the error code.

If a rate isn’t on the active list, you can notify the property prompting them to adjust the setting in either your system or the Booking.com extranet. For the re-activation of a deactivated room or rate in the extranet the property will need to get in contact with Booking.com via their Inbox. Alternatively, you could also use the section for managing rooms and rates from the Content API to activate or deactivate rates and activate or deactivate rooms.

Note: both of these errors are also shown to properties on the calendar in the Booking.com extranet. See more information in this article on the Partner Hub for properties.

HOTEL_NOT_ALLOWED_FOR_CONNECTION_TYPE

What does it mean?

A property is not fully connected to the provider yet, or they’ve cancelled the connection but the provider is still trying to update the property on Booking.com.

What should I do?

The best solution to this problem is the OTA_HotelSearch call, specifically the ‘ConnectionStatus’ element within the TPA_Extensions of the OTA_HotelSearchRS. Any ConnectionStatus other than “XML Active” will return the HOTEL_NOT_ALLOWED_FOR_CONNECTION_TYPE error.

These errors represent a high percentage of the ones properties regularly encounter. That means that cleaning them up will make it easier for you and us to focus on other errors. If you’d like more detailed advice or would like to help us make more improvements to your system, please submit a request form.