Third party suppliers’ integrations upgrades
What’s new
There are three different upgrades made available in this release:
- Multiple destinations from different third party suppliers can now be merged to a single destination used for product search
- Multiple hotels from Lemax system and third-party supplier systems can now be merged to multiple hotels from Lemax system and third-party supplier systems
- Now it is also possible to manually merge hotels
- Hotel description, attributes, and images can now be copied from Lemax hotel to third party supplier hotel, from hotel of one third party supplier to a hotel of another third-party supplier, and from third party supplier hotel to Lemax hotel
Problem
Searching by a certain destination in Lemax system searches for only one destination in the third-party supplier system, and there is no possibility to search multiple third-party supplier system destinations by only specifying one in Lemax system. This is quite a problem as every system can (and often does) have a different destination structure and granulation, and clients often want to group more granulated destinations to be searchable under only one destination.
When Lemax system searches for hotels in Lemax and in a third-party supplier system, the system tries to merge the hotels (which can be considered as the same hotel) from Lemax system and from the third-party supplier system by certain criteria. This is done on the fly when the search is performed, which degrades the search performance.
Since the connection is not persisted, there is no possibility to manually merge hotels that the system can not merge automatically.
Some third-party supplier systems provide scarce hotel information (descriptions, images, attributes). or they even don’t provide some of them, and there is no possibility to manually enter this information through the system UI.
Manually defining descriptions, attributes and attaching images to hotels in Lemax can be quite a time-consuming task, and there is no ability to copy that information from the same hotel that is provided by a third-party supplier system.
Benefit for the users
- Ability to search for hotels from multiple Lemax and third-party supplier system destinations by connecting them to a single destination used for searching
- Only available if the client has at least one active third-party supplier system
- Better search performance since the hotels from different systems will be merged beforehand instead of being merged on the fly when the search is initiated
- Possibility to manually merge hotels that, for whatever reason, the system did not manage to merge automatically
- Possibility for the conditions taken into consideration when matching the hotels from different systems to be configurable (e.g. possibility to match the hotels only by their name)
- Ability to copy hotel description, attributes, and/or images:
- From Lemax hotel to a third-party supplier hotel merged with the Lemax hotel
- From third-party supplier hotel to a third-party supplier hotel merged with the third-party supplier hotel
- From third-party supplier hotel to a Lemax hotel merged with the third-party supplier hotel
How it works
Adding a new country-level global destination
- Go to Options → Travel product settings → Destination merge
2. Click on the New country button
3. A new window will open prompting you to enter the country name
Mapping multiple Lemax and third-party supplier destinations to a single global destination
- Go to Options → Travel product settings → Destination merge
2. Click on the edit icon of the global destination you want to merge destinations from other systems to
3. A new window will open where you can choose multiple destinations from each system (Lemax and third party supplier systems) to be merged with the global destination.
The fields will offer the destinations after at least 3 letters are typed in:
4. Click the OK button to save the changes
a. If the selected destination is already merged to a different global destination, the system will display an error message
Manual hotel merge
- Go to Accommodation → 3rd party supplier accommodation
2. Open the hotel you want to merge with other hotels by clicking the edit icon
3. A new window will open where you can choose multiple hotels from each system (Lemax and third party supplier systems) to be merged with each other.
Check the Merged manually checkbox to enable manual hotel selection
4. The fields will offer the hotels after at least 3 letters are typed in
5. Click the OK button to save the changes
Copying the hotel description, attributes, and/or images between merged hotels from different systems
- Go to Accommodation → Accommodation
or Accommodation → 3rd party supplier accommodation
2. Click on the Sync all button
3. A new window will open where you can choose from which supplier hotels you want to copy the data from, to which supplier hotels you want to copy the data to, and what data you want to copy
4. In the Data to sync field, choose what information you want to copy (Description, Attributes, Photos)
5. In the From supplier field, choose the supplier of the hotels from which you want to copy the data from
6. In the To supplier field, choose the supplier of the hotels to which you want to copy the data to
Once you select the supplier in this field, a grid will be shown with all hotels from the chosen supplier
7. Select the hotels for which you want to copy the data to
8. Click on the Sync button
9. After the synchronization has finished, a grid will be displayed with hotels that have been selected to copy the data to
- The grid will also show the status of the synchronization (Synced if the data copy was successful, Failed if not successful)
- For the hotels that were successfully synced, the grid will also contain the hotel name from which the data was copied
