Veridien Channels Setup

Use Veridien Channels to sell your rooms on online travel agencies (OTAs) with your availability and rates kept in step, and to have OTA bookings arrive in your reservation list on their own. Veridien connects to OTAs through Channex, a channel manager service, so you set each channel up once and manage it from one page. Booking.com is the channel you can connect today.

Open Channels from the Sell group in the sidebar. The page has two tabs:

• Channels: every channel with its Status (Live, Setting up or Not connected), what is Mapped (or how many steps are left to go live) and the Last sync. Select a channel to open its setup steps, or its own page once it is live.
• Activity: the log of everything sent to and received from Channex. See Reading the monitoring panels.

• Room types with rooms. A room type needs at least one room before it can be sold on a channel. Add rooms on the Rooms page first.
• Rate plans. Each room type you sell on an OTA needs at least one rate plan in your base currency. See Rate plans.
• A Booking.com property. You need access to the property in the Booking.com extranet and its property ID, which Veridien calls the Hotel ID.
• A public address. Channex delivers new reservations to Veridien over the public internet, so reservations only arrive on a hosted install, not on localhost.

Select Booking.com on the Channels tab to open its setup steps. The first step, Link your property, creates your property in Channex using its name, address, currency and time zone. If the currency or time zone is wrong, fix it in Property settings first.

Drag the Slide to link control to the end to link the property. The step then reads as done, and the rest of the setup unlocks.

Channex tells Veridien about new, changed and cancelled reservations through a webhook. Veridien registers it for you once the property is linked, and registers it again if it is missing or points at an old address.

Once the property is linked, the Channels page shows an Incoming reservations fact:

• Receiving: reservations will arrive.
• Not receiving: the line below it says why. On a localhost install, Channex cannot reach Veridien, and reservations arrive on a public address only. Otherwise, select Try again; if it fails twice, check the Activity tab.

Booking.com's setup steps are, in order:

1. Link your property (step 1 above).
2. Request Channex as your connectivity provider, in the Booking.com extranet.
3. Accept the XML service agreement, also in the extranet.
4. Connect & map in Veridien.
5. Activate the connection.
6. Pull future reservations (optional).

Veridien cannot see the extranet, so for steps 2 and 3 select Mark as done yourself once you have finished them. Each step has a View full guide link to Connect Booking.com, which walks through the extranet side.

Select Connect & map to open the connection wizard. It has four steps: Settings, Rooms, Rates and Confirm.

1. Settings. Enter your Booking.com Hotel ID and select Test Connection. Veridien checks it and loads the rooms and rates set up on Booking.com, then confirms how many rooms it found and their currency. You cannot continue until the test passes.
2. Rooms. Each Booking.com room is listed with its number of rates. Choose Your Room Type for every one; all rooms must be mapped before you can continue.
3. Rates. For each Booking.com rate, choose Your Rate Plan. Only rate plans of the mapped room type, in the channel's currency, are offered. Rates marked Read-only are managed by Booking.com and are optional to map; every other rate must be mapped.
4. Confirm. Review the room and rate plan mappings, edit the Channel Title if you like, and select Connect.

Saving a new connection does not put it live. Select Activate under Activate the connection to start selling. Activating also sends your current availability and rates and imports the channel's future reservations.

Once a channel is live, selecting it opens its page with four tabs: Rooms and rates, Rate adjustments, Availability rules and Connection.

• To change the mapping, select Edit mapping on the Rooms and rates tab. The wizard opens on your current mapping, and saving with Update keeps the channel live.
• To stop selling, open the Connection tab and select Disconnect Booking.com. Veridien stops sending rates and availability and new bookings stop coming in. The channel and its room and rate mapping are removed from Channex, so connecting again means mapping again. Booking.com keeps selling what it last received until you close the dates in its extranet. Bookings already in Veridien, your room types and rate plans, and the activity log all stay.

You map rooms and rates in the connection wizard (steps 2 and 3 above). Afterwards, the Rooms and rates tab on the channel's page shows what each Booking.com room and rate sells in Veridien. Anything not yet mapped shows Not mapped, and room types that are not sold on the channel are listed below the table.

A mapped rate plan still does not reach the channel unless it is opted in. Each rate plan has a Distribute to channels switch on its Distribution tab, and it is off by default, so mapping alone is not enough. The mapping shows no problem and the sync reports success, yet no price is published.

Veridien also withholds some plans whatever their mapping says. A plan is not distributed when it is:

On the Promotions page, an info button next to a withheld promotion's Channels switch names the reason. If a price is missing from a channel, check there and on the plan's Distribution tab.

Use the Rate adjustments tab on the channel's page to sell at a price that differs from your rate plan without changing the plan itself, for example 10% higher on Booking.com to cover its commission. It needs at least one mapped rate plan.

Select Add rate adjustment, then choose the Room type, Rate plan, Direction (Higher or Lower), By (Percentage or Fixed amount) and the Percentage or Amount. Select Add rate adjustment to save. Adjustments apply every time rates are sent; a plan without one sells at its own rate. Select Edit or Remove on a row to change it.

See Managing availability for how adjusted rates are sent.

Once a channel is live and Incoming reservations reads Receiving, OTA reservations arrive on their own:

1. The guest books on the OTA, and Channex notifies Veridien.
2. Veridien creates the reservation, using your mapping to choose its room type and rate plan.
3. The guest's details, the dates, occupancy, amount and any notes are added to the reservation.
4. Availability is recalculated and sent back out, so the reserved night is not sold twice.

The reservation then behaves like any other. It appears in your reservation list and on the Front desk dashboard for its arrival date, tagged with the OTA as its source. Veridien also checks Channex for new reservations every five minutes, so a reservation the webhook missed is still imported.

Once your property is linked, the Channels page shows Live channels, Last sync, Sync errors, last 24 hours and Incoming reservations. A live channel's own page shows its Status, Hotel ID, Pricing model, Last sync and Incoming reservations, and a Sync errors flag with a link to the Activity tab when something has failed.

Check these on the first day after activating a channel, and place a test reservation on the OTA if it supports one, to confirm it arrives with the right room type, rate plan, dates and guest details before you rely on the connection.

For day-to-day availability work, continue to Managing availability.