How do I connect BookingPal?

Learn how to connect BookingPal to LODGEA

BookingPal provides connection to tens of thousands of accommodations, especially vacation rental, across Central and North America. Leading American vacation rental agencies use BookingPal as their distribution technology. The connection to BookingPal enables a full synchronization of the properties available. This includes images, descriptions, amenities, services, policies and many more.

 

Things you need to know about onboarding BookingPal

Not all owners and agencies that are connected to BookingPal are available for public distribution. Contact the BookingPal connectivity team to evaluate suitable properties and how to connect which properties to your system. If you are a vacation rental agency currently using BookingPal, ask your account manager to help connect to LODGEA.

 

Prerequisites before connecting

⚠️Payment processing and PCI-compliant pass-thru

LODGEA supports both integrated payment processing where you are the Mercant Of Record (MoR) (you process the customer's card with our integrated payment processing) as well as the payment processing by BookingPal (where LODGEA passes the card credentials to BookingPal). You need to inform BookingPal about which payment processing method you prefer to use. As the pass-thru of payment credentials (payment processing by BookingPal) does not support Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) such as Visa Secure, MasterCard SecureCode or American Express SafeKey, we recommend to always use our internal payment processing.


As the BookingPal connection is fully automated, you only need to configure the credentials in the Management Console. The BookingPal connectivity team will provide you with the API key to use with your system.

✅ Steps to connect BookingPal

1. Provide the Endpoint URL for the connection to BookingPal

2. Insert the API key you received by BookingPal into the configuration

3. Configure the property code filters for the properties, if applicable

4. Save the configuration to enable it

5. Request BookingPal to perform the initial load of the properties

6. Wait for the import to complete and properties to appear in your inventory


It is highly recommended that you apply any required filters before letting BookingPal import properties. BookingPal has a very large amount of properties and inserting a large amount of properties will incurr charges in your LODGEA account.

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BookingPal connection in the connectivity configuration

Filter imported properties

You can apply filters for the property id (code or id of the property), the country code, city name or postal code. The filters are regular expressions. The default value of .* will import all properties that BookingPal pushes. We recommend you let BookingPal filter and select the properties you wish to import into your LODGEA account, if possible.

By default, all imported properties will be automatically translated and the content will be overwritten with every import. By defining a property filter you can enable or disable the automatic translation and also switch the connection to only import availability and rate information (ARI).

ARI-sync only

If ARI-sync only is enabled, LODGEA will import all contents initially and subsequently only update availability and rates. If ARI-sync only is disabled, LODGEA will overwrite all contents when updated by BookingPal. This means that if you change content in the Management Console, it will be overwritten when updated by BookingPal.

Auto-translate

If Auto-translate is enabled, LODGEA will automatically translate all text contents when importing properties. If ARI-sync only is enabled, it will only translate when the contents are initially loaded. If ARI-sync only is disabled it will translate the content whenever the property is updated by BookingPal.

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A fully synchronized BookingPal property in the inventory management

⚠️ Ensure to comply with BookingPal guidelines

LODGEA provides a number of optioons to work with BookingPal contents. It is up to you and your relationship with BookingPal to ensure you comply with the content guidelines. There are different guidelines for distributors and vacationa rental agencies. If BookingPal mandates that contents cannot be changed without the consent of the owner or agencies, it is your duty to comply with these requirements unless you are the vacation rental agency yourself.