AirBnB suspended

WuBookers,

I am very sad to announce we must stop the complete (2-way) connection to the channel AirBnB. The unique way to connect this OTA at the moment is by usign the plugin iCal.

The connectivity to AirBnb has been developed with a technic called screen scraping: with few words, the channel manager emulates the user actions when updating the extranet of the OTA. THe system access from the control panel of the OTA same as the user does manually and repeat (but automatically) the same operations done with the mouse. This has been done cause AirBnB does not offer a reliable interface to channel managers as most of the OTAs do.

During these days, and it has been always difficult by the way, we tried to contact them to request the possibility to make screen scraping. Synxis, for example, let us connect their platform this way. Moreover, they are so kind to let us know when they are going to change something in their system, to avoid eventual errors on our channel manager.

But it looks that AirBnB do not consider it as a big problem. Instead, we have the feeling they do not want to have relations with channel management companies. At least so far..

So, as told before, the unique alternative is the plugin iCal. With its use, it is possible to update automaticaly the availability but not prices. Also, the biggest lack is the fact that with iCal, the channel manage woodoo is not able to fetch reservations into the system. For each reservation the hotelier must insert it in WuBook manually.

To match eventual customers needs, we decided to listen to any special request to arrange a solution. If you request personally the iCal plugin activation to substitute the stopped screen scraping one, we will charge you the 50% of the cost for the next weeks. I’d like to underline we offer this discount, even if so far (and as always), we did not charge any fee to mantain the screen scraping connectivities. AirBnB included..

Sincerely, I am really disappointed because we made a big effort to offer the connectivity (screen scraping is not so simple to develop) and finally we are facing to a wall on the other side. I hope this situation could change in the future, but I feel we have almost nothing to do about it.. 🙁