Hi Marc,
This is just an observation regarding accommodation systems of which we have several years of experience.
Hotel owners, very often, have their own online booking/reservation system. They will also, very often, also register with booking.com, Expedia, AirBnB and the like.
It is also often the case that the hotel will "allocate" a number of rooms to each booking engine. If they do not then they are likely to hit a "duplicate booking" situation.
A small hotel with 30 rooms registers with bookings.com and registers all 30 rooms (because they are stupid, it happens). They then repeat the process with other booking engines and end up, apparently, with 90 or 120 or more rooms to rent. You can see the problems.
Whilst programmatically this should not be too difficult, logistically it is a nightmare.
By adding this extra layer of yet another booking engine You run the risk of accepting a booking for a hotel that is already full. You've sold the event tickets (chances are there are few, if any, others selling tickets online) over which you have a reasonable amount of control and your customer also thinks they have a place to stay when they don't.
Telling somebody that they don't have a ticket and making a refund may not be the best thing and should be avoided where possible, but it's not the end of the world. Telling somebody that they have a ticket but nowhere to stay (especially when accommodation may be limited in that area) when they have paid for both is likely to present major problems.
I know this could also happen with event tickets where the organizer is also selling tickets. I thought it was just worth bringing to your attention because hotels are very much less likely to update multiple systems to keep their rooms in sync. Indeed, it would probably mean having a simple front end process for hotels to decrement the available properties as rooms are booked/reserved elsewhere which is something that, in our experience, they are unlikely to do.
Auto fill only works, as we have found, if you are given exclusive access to the accommodation available. Unfortunately managers/owners do not like "putting all their eggs in one basket" at least that;s our experience.
It's still a good idea but, from an operational point of view, needs careful thought and planning.
I thought that I would simply draw this to your attention.
Best wishes,
Ian
Best wishes,
Ian
