Simplex Integration for DuveAI's Booking Agent

Overview

Use cases

• Answer availability questions outside office hours. Someone browsing your site at midnight asks whether you have a room for next weekend and gets a real answer with a price.
• Convert website chat into bookings. The agent gathers dates, party size, and destination, then presents matching rooms with a link straight into Simplex.
• Handle a multi-property portfolio. One Simplex connection can cover several hotels. The agent helps the person pick the right one before showing rooms.
• Filter by real policy, not guesswork. Child and infant age rules come from Simplex, so the agent will not offer a room to a party the property cannot accept.
• Reduce the pre-booking load on your reservations team. Repetitive "do you have anything for these dates" questions are handled automatically.

Before you start

• Confirm the AI Booking Agent is available on your plan and SmartReply is turned on.
• Get your Simplex API key. This is the only credential Duve needs. Request it from Simplex if you do not already have it.
• Make sure your properties in Simplex have a country set. Properties without a country are excluded when Duve builds the agent's hotel list, so they will never be offered.
• If you work with brands, decide which Duve brand each Simplex property belongs to. You will map them during setup.

How to set it up and use it

Connect Simplex

1. Go to Settings > Connections > Booking Engines.
2. Click Add booking engine, or Create new connection if this is your first one.

3. In the Booking engine dropdown, select Simplex.

   

4. Enter your Simplex API Key. The field is required, and the key is stored encrypted.

   

5. If your account uses brands, pick a brand.

   

6. Click Connect.

Map your properties to brands

• Each brand can be assigned to only one property. Once a brand is used, it disappears from the dropdown on the other rows.
• If your account has brands, at least one property must be mapped before you can save.
• If your account has no brands at all, the Properties section does not appear. The connection still syncs and works normally.
• A connection with no brand mappings shows All in the Brand column, meaning it serves every brand.

Turn on pre-booking replies

1. Go to Settings > DuveAI > Agents.
2. Find the Pre-booking replies row.
3. Set it to Enabled.

Keep the connection in sync

Edit or remove a connection

Host experience

• The Booking Engines page lists every connection with its source name, the brand or brands it serves, the creation date, and the last sync date.
• The page subtitle names the engines you currently have connected.
• Sync results are confirmed with an on-screen message, and the last sync date updates on the row.
• You cannot connect the same Simplex API key twice. Duve blocks the attempt and tells you a connection with those credentials already exists.

Guest experience

• The agent works out where the person wants to stay, when, and for how many people, asking follow-up questions when something is missing.
• With a multi-property connection, it helps narrow down to a hotel first, then shows rooms.
• Results come back as cards rather than a wall of text. Depending on the question, the person sees a list of hotels or a list of rooms. On WhatsApp, the cards are delivered using a WhatsApp template, and your team sees the same content in the Communication Hub.
• Each room offer can include the room name and category, a description, maximum occupancy, adult and child capacity, room size, amenities, the rate plan, the meal plan, a photo, the price and currency for the requested dates, and a link to book.
• Meal plans are shown as Room Only, Bed and Breakfast, Half Board, Full Board, or All Inclusive, depending on what Simplex returns.
• The booking itself is completed on Simplex. Duve presents the offer and the link; it does not take payment or create the reservation.
• Child and infant rules come from your Simplex configuration. The agent uses each property's maximum guest count, minimum adult age, and infant age ceiling to decide what it can offer, and it will not propose a room to a party the property does not accept.

Troubleshooting

• A property is missing from the Properties list: Sync again first. If it still does not appear, check that the property exists and is active in Simplex under the same API key.
• A property appears in the list but is never offered to guests: The most common cause is a missing country on the property in Simplex. Properties without a country are excluded from the agent's hotel list. Add the country in Simplex, then sync.
• The Pre-booking replies row is disabled: No booking engine is connected yet, or the connection was deleted. Connect Simplex first.
• The agent quotes the wrong room details: Room names, descriptions, capacities, and amenities all come from Simplex. Correct them there, then sync.
• The agent is not offering rooms for a family with young children: Check the child and infant settings on that property in Simplex. If a property does not allow infants, the agent will respect that.
• Sync fails: The usual cause is an invalid or expired API key. Because the key cannot be edited, delete the connection and create a new one with the current key. If a fresh key still fails, contact Duve Support.
• I cannot save my changes: If your account uses brands, at least one property must be assigned to a brand.
• I get an error saying the connection already exists: That API key is already connected on this account. Find the existing connection in the list rather than adding a second one.

Restrictions and limitations

• The Simplex API key is set once at creation and cannot be changed afterward. Changing keys means deleting and recreating the connection.
• The same API key cannot be used for two connections on the same account.
• Each Duve brand can be mapped to only one property per connection.
• Properties without a country set in Simplex are excluded from the agent entirely.
• The agent presents offers and links. It cannot create, modify, or cancel a reservation in Simplex.
• Pre-booking replies apply to conversations with no linked reservation. Guests who already have a reservation are handled by SmartReply as usual.
• Property and room data is only as current as the last sync. There is no live push from Simplex for catalog changes, though prices and availability are checked at the time of the question.

Tips and tricks

• Sync right after you make structural changes in Simplex, such as adding a property or a room type: Do not wait to discover the gap through a guest conversation.
• Treat your Simplex room descriptions as guest-facing copy, because they are: Whatever is written there is what the agent works from.
• Fill in the country on every property in Simplex before you connect: It is the single most common reason a property never gets offered.
• Test with a realistic question before going live: give the agent a destination, a date range, and a party that includes a child, and check that what comes back matches what you would have quoted.
• Keep one connection per API key and use brand mappings to separate properties, rather than creating multiple connections.

FAQs

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