Standard element formats
Date and time
All references to Date, Time and Timestamp will use the format required by the OpenTravel Specification, which follows ISO standard 8601:
Date The Date will be the Calendar Date format represented as [YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] where [YYYY] indicates a four-digit year, 0000 through 9999, [MM] indicates a two-digit month of the year, 01 through 12, and [DD] indicates a two-digit day of that month, 01 through 31. Example: 2006-01-27
Time The Time will be the 24-hour clock (extended format) represented as [hh]:[mm]:[ss] where [hh] refers to a zero-padded hour between 00 and 24 (where 24 is only used to notate midnight at the end of a calendar day), [mm] refers to a minute between 00 and 59, and [ss] refers to a second between 00 and 59. Example: 22:59:01
Timestamp
The Timestamp will be a combination of date and time represented as [YYYY]-[MM]-[DD]T[hh]:[mm]:[ss] where the time designator [T] is used to show the start of the time component. Example: 2006-01-27T17:59:01
Specifications for currency amounts
Only positive currency amount are allowed within the message. Negative currency amount are not allowed therefore will generate an error if present within any of the amount attributes.
Positive amount
Positive ten U.S. dollars would appear in the message as: 10.00
Enterprise Connectivity uses the Decimal Fixed Point for all decimal usages.
In fixed-point numbers, DECIMAL(p,s), the decimal point is fixed at a specific place, regardless of the value of the number. When you specify a column of this type, you write its precision (p) as the total number of digits it can store, from 1 to 32. You write its scale (s) as the total number of digits that fall to the right of the decimal point. All numbers with an absolute value less than 0.5*10-s have the value zero. The largest absolute value of a variable of this type that you can store without an error is 10p-s - 10-s
For example: 5,2 will allow the following values – 12345 or 123.45
General business rules
Business Rules are specific rules defined by ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY that further clarify the use of a particular element and/or attribute within the OpenTravel XML message.
The following rules apply to transactions submitted to Enterprise Connectivity
Any Elements and/or Attributes present in the message that are not defined within this document will be ignored by ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY.
o One exception – Text Element under descriptions will only be allowed once, even if the parent element is not expected by ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY.
Unless otherwise specifically stated within the document the OpenTravel schema definitions, limitations, and usage will be enforced.
Only English based property information will be distributed to the GDSs.
Enforcement of English as the first message received for action code of Add. If English is not the first message processed for an Add, all records for the property will be rejected until English is the first message received within a Transactional message or Batch.
All amount attributes are assumed to be in the property’s native currency.
When sending the Feature element, the parent element Service must contain the Code attribute of 47 (equals Accessible Code) or 80 (equals Security). If not present, an error will be returned and no information will be updated.
Within the Feature element, upon providing Physically Challenged (Feature/@AccessibleCode) or Security (Feature/@SecurityCode) information, only one of these code types should be present. If both are present, an error will be returned and no information will be updated. Multiple Feature elements may be sent in the same message to update more than one of these information types.
Within the Service element, upon providing Hotel Amenity (Service/@Code), Business Services (Service/@BusinessServiceCode), or Meal Plan (Service/@MealPlanCode) information, only one of these code types should be present. If more than one of these is sent, an error will be returned and no property information will be updated. Multiple Service elements may be sent in the same message to update more than one of these information types.
Default information will be applied in HCD for specific OpenTravel Hotel Amenities, Room Amenities, Business Services and Recreation facilities based on the description of the code in the OpenTravel code list. The three types of default are as follows:
o Whether it is on-site or offsite. For example, if Hotel Amenity HAC.64 (On-site parking) is provided, the amenity will always be recorded as on-site in HCD (i.e. the same as setting
Service/@Proximity=”1”). HCD will ignore any other value of Proximity that may be supplied.
Whether it is always complimentary or whether charges can be specified. For example, if Business Service BUS.52 (Incoming fax complimentary) is provided, ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY will automatically set this service to be complimentary (Service/@Included=”true”) and will ignore any charges that may be supplied.
Whether operating times/schedules can be specified. For example, if Hotel Amenity HAC.33 (Elevators) is supplied, any operating schedules will be ignored because they are not appropriate for this type of amenity.
Refer to the “HCD OpenTravel Supported Codes” spreadsheet for the defaults that will be applied for specific codes in the HAC, RMA, BUS and RST code lists.
If Attraction/@AttractionCategoryCode is of type “Airport”, then Attraction/@Code must contain the corresponding three letter airport code. This is the only manner in which the attribute Code will be used.
All free form text fields allow bulleted lists.
The following elements contain an attribute labeled ID. This is a unique identifying value assigned by the creating system. The ID attribute will be used to reference a primary-key value within our database.
Attraction o GuestRoom o MeetingRoom o Restaurant
CancelPenalty (***Note: attribute is labeled PolicyCode***)
At minimum, one RoomAmenityCode is required per each GuestRoom.
The Code attribute under the GuestRoom element can be used to group amenities that are not specific to an individual GuestRoom. ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY supports use of the codes ALL and SOME under the Code attribute. When the Code equates to ALL or SOME, this will identify that the amenities are found in ALL rooms or SOME rooms. When the Code does not equal ALL or SOME, the amenities will only be associated with the specify guest room.
The OpenTravel codes are only allowed once per property unless otherwise specified within the usage of the attribute.
The PrimaryLangID attribute denotes the language that the data within the rest of the message. The following rules will apply to PrimaryLangID:
When sending an action code of Delete, the property will be deleted for all languages when the primary language code = EN (English)
When sending an action code of Delete and the language code is not EN (English), then only the data associated to the language will be deleted.
Chain, Brand, and PID codes must be sent in upper case.
HotelStatusCode attribute allows the status of 5 (Test). “Test” properties will be excluded from all HCD content extracts and will only be accessible by distributors when the exact brand and PID are included within the request.
HotelStatusCode attribute allows the status of 3 (PreOpening). ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY will ignore the HotelStatus attribute (Bookable / NonBookable flag) and default to NonBookable. This will allow the property to be visible but not receive booking request.
When the Action code is Add the Overwrite and Removal attributes are ignored.
There can be multiple GuaranteePayment policies per property, but only one for each GuaranteeCode within a specified date range is allowed.
The ExistsCode attribute is used to help determine if an “amenity” code is available at the property. When the ExistsCode attribute equals 1, ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY will include the “amenity”. When the ExistsCode attribute does not equal 1, the “amenity” will not be added. If the client chooses to not use this attribute or leave this attribute empty, ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY will add all “amenities” associated to the empty attribute.
When providing an update message to modify the address (specifically AddressLine attribute) information, all previous AddressLine must be provided including the line which includes the modified piece of data. For example, if 5 lines were previously provided, then all 5 lines will need to be provided to update the AddressLine data.
At least one property phone number is required with a PhoneLocationType=”4” and a PhoneTechType=”1”.
The Removal flag found under ContactInfo element will only apply to removal of the phone data found under the Phone element.
A property status to Delete will not be able to be modified. Please contact your ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY representative to update the property from a delete status.
A property status to Sanctioned will not be able to be modified. Please see section 2.8 for more details or you may contact your ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY representative for further details.
TimeZone attribute houses the information for both the time zone and GMT offset. ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY allows for each individual piece of information to be submitted together using a semi-colon between the two or sent individually. However, when only sending the GMT offset the semi-colon is needed and must be the first character.
Effective dates (Start, End and DOW) for Guarantee Payment Policies with the same GuaranteeCode value may not overlap. ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY will return an error if two or more Guarantee Payment policies are sent with same date range & DOW, or an update sent would result in an overlap.
o For example: If a policy is sent for 01/01/09 through 01/31/09 for Mon through Friday, a second policy may be sent for the same date range for Sat and Sun, but the same date range with the same Days of Week will not be allowed.
The Guarantee Deposit Policy date ranges are independent of the Method of Payment Policy date ranges.
End date under the Guarantee Payment cannot be before the Start date.
Basic child policies, such as “1 child aged 12 or under goes free per adult” can be defined using structured fields using the element HotelDescriptiveContent/Policies/Policy/PolicyInfo. However, if more complex child policies are required – such as “1 child aged 12 or under goes free for every 2 paying guests up to a maximum of 2 free children” then the child policy can be extended using the TPA extension:
HotelDescriptiveContents/TPA_Extensions/TPA_Extension/ChildPolicyExtended. The ChildPolicyExtended element is intended to supplement the basic child policy information in PolicyInfo, not a replace it.
Special characters and trademarks
Special Characters
With the allowance of multi byte languages, special characters will also be supported in HCD. Special characters can range from the simple umlaut to more complex character sets. The following link is to the Unicode Code Chart for Symbols and Special Punctuation (special characters). Suppliers can reference this site to determine the requirements for each character.
http://www.unicode.org/charts/symbols.html
Suppliers will need to modify their process to match the HTML Unicode Standards. The standard for sending special characters to ENTERPRISE CONNECTIVITY is as follows: ode;.
Using the charts found in the above link, suppliers will be able to ascertain the "code" value for a special character.
For more information, the following link contains the guidelines on the use of the Unicode standard in conjunction with the XML.
http://www.w3.org/TR/unicode-xml
Trademarks
It is the responsibility of the hotel company inputting data into the HCD to ensure that trademarks used are authorized for use by their owners prior to input.
AAA Trademark Usage
Input of the American Auto Association (AAA) trademarks and references to diamond ratings are prohibited by AAA. Messages containing any reference to AAA will be return as an error to the supplier. None of the data in that message will be processed.
Last updated