Managing a children policy

Using the Flexible child rates solution, you can set up and update a property's children policy.

Setting up a children policy

Setting up a children policy on the property level requires the following actions:

• Indicating whether children are allowed.
• Specifying the minimum age from which children are allowed. (Default minimum age is 0.)
• Specifiying age buckets with their corresponding age ranges.

You can do it in two ways:

• Using the API solution as described in this section.
• Telling your property to use the Booking.com extranet.

What are age buckets?

An age bucket is a category for children prices that specifies the age range to which the eventual price applies to. You must at least create one, but can create up to three age buckets per property. Each age bucket exists of a minimum and maximum age, where the maximum age is inclusive. Therefore, the minimum age of an age bucket (excluding the first, which does not have a preceding age bucket) must be larger than the maximum age of the preceding bucket. Let's look at an example scenario:

• Age bucket 1 with minimum age 0 and maximum age 3.
• Age bucket 2 with minimum age 4 and maximum age 12.
• Age bucket 3 with minimum age 13 and maximum age 17.

You can see that the ages are inclusive and do not overlap. If they do, the system throws an error. When sending prices for children, the system checks whether the age bucket you specified exists, or whether the age range you specified matches an existing age bucket.

Creating or updating a children policy

POST https://supply-xml.booking.com/hotels/ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif

The POST /ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif endpoint enables you to create or update the children policy of a property by:

• Indicating that children are allowed: You must set the AcceptedGuestType attribute within the PolicyInfo element to ChildrenAllowed.
• Specifying the minimum age from which children are allowed: If your property requires a minimum age other than 0, you must set the MinGuestAge attribute within the PolicyInfo element to the desired age. Otherwise, you can leave this attribute out of the request.
• Specifiying the age buckets with their corresponding age ranges: You must set at least one age bucket if you want to send children prices. To create an age bucket you specify the MinAge and MaxAge attributes within the AgeBucket element.

→ If you have not implemented HotelDescriptiveContentNotif (also known as Content API), then your property can also manage their children policy using the Booking.com extranet.

Creating or updating

If you are not creating a property using the HotelDescriptiveContentNotif endpoint, creating and updating a property's children policy basically work the same way. For either you must:

1. [Retrieve the relevant policy information (nested within the Policies object) by retrieving property details.][retrieve-property-details]
2. Set HotelDescriptiveContentNotifType to Overlay.

Request body parameters

The following table describes the body parameters that concern flexible child pricing. Ensure that you include all the other existing policies for your property in the request body to not remove existing information because of overlay logic.

Request body example

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRQ>
   <HotelDescriptiveContents>
      <HotelDescriptiveContent HotelCode="6963343" HotelDescriptiveContentNotifType="Overlay">
          <Policies>
             <Policy>
               <PolicyInfo AcceptedGuestType="ChildrenAllowed" MinGuestAge="0"/>
               <TPA_Extensions>
                 <AgeBuckets>
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="0" MaxAge="3"/> 
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="4" MaxAge="12"/>
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="13" MaxAge="17"/>
                 </AgeBuckets>
               </TPA_Extensions>
            </Policy>
         </Policies>
      </HotelDescriptiveContent>
   </HotelDescriptiveContents>
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRQ>

Response body example

The following is a successful response body example:

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRS>
  <Success />
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRS>

Response body elements

The following table describes the response elements:

Retrieving age buckets

POST https://supply-xml.booking.com/hotels/ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfo

The POST /ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfo endpoint enables you to retrieve existing age buckets (with age ranges) for children on the property level.

You need to enable feature Flexible children prices from the Feature management page.

Request body parameters

The following table describes the required request body elements for this endpoint:

Request body example

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfoRQ>
    <HotelDescriptiveInfos>
        <HotelDescriptiveInfo HotelCode="6963343">
        </HotelDescriptiveInfo>
    </HotelDescriptiveInfos>
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfoRQ>

Response body example

The following is a successful response body example:

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfoRS>
   <HotelDescriptiveContents>
       <HotelDescriptiveContent HotelName="HOTEL_NAME" LanguageCode="en" ID="6963343" Status="Open / bookable" CurrencyCode="USD">
         ...
          <Policies>
             <Policy>
               ...
               <TPA_Extensions>
                 <AgeBuckets>
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="0" MaxAge="3" AgeBucketID="1"/> 
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="4" MaxAge="12" AgeBucketID="2"/>
                     <AgeBucket MinAge="13" MaxAge="17" AgeBucketID="3"/>
                 </AgeBuckets>
               </TPA_Extensions>
            </Policy>
         </Policies>
      </HotelDescriptiveContent>
   </HotelDescriptiveContents>
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveInfoRS>

Response body elements

The following table only describes the response body parameters that concern the children policies and pricing.

Removing age buckets

POST https://supply-xml.booking.com/hotels/ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif

The POST /ota/OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif endpoint enables you to remove all age buckets by sending an empty AgeBuckets object. To remove only one or two age buckets, see updating child policies.

Request body parameters

The following table only describes the body parameters that concern the children policy. Ensure that you include all the other existing policies for your property in the request body to not remove other existing information because of overlay logic.

Request body example

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRQ>
   <HotelDescriptiveContents>
      <HotelDescriptiveContent HotelName="HOTEL_NAME" HotelCode="6963343" HotelDescriptiveContentNotifType="Overlay">
	      ...
          <Policies>
             <Policy>
               ...
               <TPA_Extensions>
                 <AgeBuckets>
                 </AgeBuckets>
               </TPA_Extensions>
            </Policy>
         </Policies>
      </HotelDescriptiveContent>
   </HotelDescriptiveContents>
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRQ>

Response body example

The following is a successful response body example:

<OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRS>
  <Success />
</OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotifRS>

Response body elements

The following table describes the response elements: