Glossary of terms

A list of important terms used in this documentation.

A

Agency booking

A reservation where the property handles and processes the guest's payment. It is not part of the Payments by Booking.com solution.

B

Booking Assistant

A chatbot that handles messages between guests and properties. It acts as an intermediary, answering the simplest questions itself, and forwarding those that need human attention.

I

independent property

A property owned by a person under their own name, rather than by a company. Common examples are holiday homes and private apartments.

L

legal entity ID

An identifier for the legal entity that owns or manages a property (such as a property management company or a hotel chain.). When you create a property with Content API, you must provide a legal entity ID in the creation request.

Learn more about how to request a legal entity ID here.

M

machine account

A set of credentials (username and password) that grants access to the functions of the Booking.com Connectivity APIs. You can manage your machine accounts in the Connectivity Portal.

Each API call must include a machine account username and password.

P

participant

A sender or receiver of a message exchanged via the Messaging API.

Payments by Booking.com

Payments by Booking.com is a payment solution that enables Booking.com to facilitate all guests’ payments to property and pay out to property via a virtual credit card or bank transfer.

To learn more about Payments by Booking.com, see Introducing Payments by Booking.com.

PCI

Payment Card Industry. "PCI" is often used as shorthand for "PCI compliant", which means "compliant with the standards created by the PCI Security Standards Council".

property

A hotel, bed & breakfast, or other type of guest accommodation. For a full list of supported accommodation types, see Property Class Type Codes.

R

RUID

Response Unique IDentifier. Every API response body contains an RUID string at the end, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<body>
</body>
<!-- RUID: [UmFuZG9etc] -->

The string is unique for every response.

The Booking.com Connectivity Support team uses RUIDs to find specific requests/responses in the API logs. If you need to contact Connectivity Support for troubleshooting or integration help, always provide one or more RUIDs.

S

special request

A message sent by a guest to a property, asking for a change to their reservation in one of these areas:

check-in/check-out time
extra bed
bed type
airport shuttle
parking reservation