Simplebooking Integration for DuveAI's Booking Agent

Overview

Use cases

• Answer availability questions when nobody is at the desk. A visitor asks about next weekend at midnight and gets real rooms and prices.
• Turn website chat into direct bookings. Every offer links into your own SimpleBooking engine rather than an OTA.
• Run each hotel on its own terms. With one connection per hotel, each property keeps its own credentials and its own brand.
• Answer the property question and the booking question together. Visitors typically ask about parking or breakfast in the same message as their dates, and both are answered in one reply.
• Sell in the visitor's language. The conversation and the room cards are presented in whatever language the person writes in.

Before you start

• Confirm the AI Booking Agent is available on your plan and SmartReply is turned on.
• Collect three things from SimpleBooking for each hotel you want to connect: the Hotel ID, a Username, and a Password. All three are required.
• Make sure the hotel has a country set in SimpleBooking. Properties without a country are excluded when Duve builds the agent's hotel list, so they will never be offered.
• Decide which Duve brand this hotel belongs to. If your account uses brands, you must pick one during setup.
• Review the hotel's room names, descriptions, photos, and amenities in SimpleBooking. That content is what appears on the cards the visitor sees.

How to set it up and use it

Connect SimpleBooking

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 SimpleBooking.

   

4. Fill in the three fields: Hotel ID, Username, and Password. All three are required. The credentials are stored encrypted.

5. If your account uses brands, choose the brand this hotel belongs to. This is required when brands exist on the account.

   

6. Click Connect.

Confirm the hotel resolved correctly

Connect more than one hotel

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

• There is an important quirk to know about editing. Credential changes are only saved when you re-enter the password. If you change the Hotel ID or the Username but leave the password field empty, the credential change is not submitted and the connection keeps its old values. Whenever you edit either of those fields, type the password again in the same save.
• Deleting asks for confirmation and removes the connection along with its synced hotel. If no other engine is connected, the Booking Agent stops being able to answer availability questions.
• If you close the dialog with Cancel immediately after creating a connection, Duve removes the connection it just created rather than leaving a half-finished one behind.

Host experience

• The Booking Engines page lists every connection with its source name, the brand it serves, the creation date, and the last sync date.
• A connection with no brand assigned shows All in the Brand column, meaning it can serve any brand.
• Sync results are confirmed on screen, and the last sync date updates on the row.
• Attempting to add a hotel that is already connected is blocked, and the message names the Hotel ID in question.

Guest experience

• The agent works out the dates, the party size including children's ages, and how the party splits across rooms, asking follow-up questions when something is missing.
• Because a SimpleBooking connection is a single hotel, the conversation goes straight to rooms rather than asking the visitor to choose a property first.
• Results come back as room cards rather than a wall of text. Each card can carry a photo, the room name, a description, amenities, the meal plan, the price, the total for the stay, and a link to book.
• The cheapest option is presented as the main offer, with other rates for the same room, such as the same room with breakfast, listed underneath along with the price difference.
• Meal plans are shown as Room Only, Bed and Breakfast, Half Board, Full Board, or All Inclusive, depending on what SimpleBooking returns.
• Card text is translated into the language the visitor is using.
• The booking itself is completed on SimpleBooking. Duve presents the offer and the link; it does not take payment or create the reservation.
• Child and infant rules come from your SimpleBooking configuration, including the maximum guest count and the age boundaries for children and infants. The agent will not offer a room to a party the hotel does not accept.
• If the requested dates are full, the agent offers nearby dates where it can and hands the conversation to your team when it cannot verify an alternative.

Troubleshooting

• No hotel name appears under the Hotel ID after syncing: The ID likely does not match a hotel reachable with those credentials. Check the ID in SimpleBooking and re-enter it, remembering to retype the password in the same save.
• The hotel is connected but never offered to visitors: The most common cause is a missing country on the property in SimpleBooking. Add it there, then sync.
• I changed the Hotel ID or Username, and nothing happened: The password field was left empty, so the credential change was not submitted. Re-enter the password and save again.
• Sync fails: Usually invalid credentials or an expired password. Re-enter all three fields and save, which triggers a fresh sync.
• The Pre-booking replies row is disabled: No booking engine is connected yet, or the connection was deleted.
• The agent quotes the wrong room details: Room names, descriptions, capacities, and amenities all come from SimpleBooking. Correct them there, then sync.
• The agent is not offering rooms to a family with young children: Check the child and infant settings for that hotel in SimpleBooking.
• I get an error saying a booking engine with that hotel ID already exists: That hotel is already connected on this account. Find the existing connection in the list rather than adding a second one.
• I cannot save. If your account uses brands, a brand must be selected.

Restrictions and limitations

• Each SimpleBooking connection covers exactly one hotel. Multiple hotels need multiple connections.
• The same Hotel ID cannot be connected twice on the same account.
• Credential changes require the password to be re-entered, even when only the Hotel ID or Username is changing.
• A brand is required when your account has brands, and each connection is assigned to a single brand.
• Properties without a country set in SimpleBooking are excluded from the agent entirely.
• The agent presents offers and links. It cannot create, modify, or cancel a reservation in SimpleBooking.
• Pre-booking replies apply only to conversations with no linked reservation. Guests who already have a reservation are handled by SmartReply.
• Room data is only as current as the last sync, although prices and availability are checked at the time of the question.

Tips and tricks

• Reopen the connection after the first sync and confirm the hotel name appears: It takes five seconds and catches a mistyped Hotel ID before a visitor does.
• When you edit anything in the credentials, fill in all three fields: It avoids the silent no-op on the password rule entirely.
• Treat your SimpleBooking room descriptions as guest-facing copy, because that is exactly what they become.
• Sync after adding or renaming a room type: The agent cannot offer what it has not synced.
• If you connect several hotels, name your brands clearly: The brand is what routes a conversation to the right connection.
• Test with a realistic question before going live: give a date range and a party that includes a child, and check the rooms and prices match what you would have quoted yourself.

FAQs

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