Overview
In the following article, we will present you with an overview of how the hotel search and results are affected by the different settings and rule options within TripBuilder.
Hotel Search - General
Generally speaking, this is the hotel search logic within TripBuilder.
We take the radius and coordinates and use them to do an internal search. We also filter by configured TravelgateX suppliers to not get hotels which are not available because of the absence of mappings.
We get up to 1000 first hotels from search results; if there are more than 1000;
We use these 1000 to request TGX for available offers.
Currently, no criteria are used to select one set of hotels rather than another set from 1000.
The general search can be controlled by the property sorting settings. Learn more about it here.
Accommodation Search Filters
The accommodation search filters on the hotel overview screen allow you to filter the displayed hotel based on text search, start rating, source or similar.
Find more about the accommodation search filter settings here.
Area Settings
The hotel search starts with the set coordinates of an area. The search will be applied with the defined radius as mentioned above.
Example:
The hotel search radius is set to 30km per default area. The radius can be individually adjusted for each area in the inventory.
Find more information about area management within TripBuilder, here.
Content Rules
The Content Rule feature enables the delimitation of content by applying pre-defined rule sets. Hotel search results can be refined by setting specific content rules for accommodation.
Example:
The following screenshot defines a rule that will "Show only hotels with free cancellation" by excluding all accommodation offers that:
Do not have free cancellation OR
Do not have information on the cancellation policy
With a direct impact on the offers made available to the user in Planner, other information elements, such as "From price", are also indirectly impacted while being consistent with the displayed offers.
Find more information about content rule setting within TripBuilder, here.
Offline Offers
An additional offline offer toggle can be enabled for TO users for the hotel overview screen. The toggle allows to display the full list of hotels in the area including the ones that are not available for the selected dates and number of pax in a room. Hotels that are not available can therefore be selected and added as ad-hoc accommodations to the itinerary. After selecting the hotel, it is important to edit the hotel trough the ad-hoc components feature (via TO-Tools), and in particular enter the net and sales price. Because they are ad-hoc component, these products will not be automatically booked with the supplier.
Important:
The feature flag to enable the offline offer toggle is not yet revealed to customers and needs to be enabled by our support team. Get in touch for more details.
Hotel Search List
The default search list sorting option can be determined within the setting. Find more information about it here.
Hotel Database
In the inventory under product, you are able to find the overview of all mapped hotels within our database. If you are missing a hotel in the hotel search results, check if it's already mapped within our database.