OTA Channels Guide

From Configuration → OTA Channels you connect the portals that sell your rooms. At the top you find «Create your property from a portal» and «iCal calendars»; below, one card for each of the five long-standing channels — Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, VRBO, Agoda — and finally «Other OTA channels», around sixty smaller portals.

Between Vezpa and the portals sits a channel manager: no portal talks to us directly. When you change a price or a room frees up, the update leaves at once towards every connected channel, but leaving is not arriving: publication on the portal can take a few minutes, and on that Vezpa promises no timings.

• Rates — the prices you write in Vezpa are sent to every connected channel.
• Availability — a room sold by one channel is closed on all the others.
• Bookings — the ones arriving from the portals appear in the calendar, with a notification.
• Changes and cancellations made on the portal are reflected in Vezpa.

The statuses of a channel

Under the name of each channel there is a pill with its status. It is not your switch: we ask the channel manager for that status, because a channel switched on here may not really be connected over there. There are five of them, and they mean different things.

Status	What it means, and whose the next move is
«Connected»	The channel manager confirms the connection. From here you match the rooms, resend the rates and import.
«Waiting for the portal»	The request went out and only your authorisation in the channel's extranet is missing. The move is yours, but it is made over there, not here.
«To be completed»	The opposite: nothing ever reached the portal. The connection was never created, and you pick it up again from here, in a minute.
«Checking…»	We could not read the real status from the channel manager. It is not a disconnection: it is uncertainty, and while it lasts the app does not offer actions that could make it worse.
«Not connected»	No request is in progress for this channel.

Who opens this page, and who can act

The page opens for the Manager and the Assistant. The actions, though, do not belong to both: switching a channel on and off, confirming a match, resending the rates, recovering a booking, importing rooms and photos, creating the property from a portal and linking the rooms are reserved for the Manager. If another role presses one of those buttons, the server answers that the operation is not theirs: it is not a fault.

Reading, on the other hand, is open: channel statuses, the boxes at the top, connection details and the portal catalogue are visible to both roles.

The percentage difference on prices

For each channel you can set a «Difference %» against the prices in your own list. It almost always serves to cover the portal commission, so that the net price left to you resembles the one from a direct sale.

• +10% — the rates sent to the channel will be 10% above your base prices
• -5% — not allowed: the markup cannot be negative, the value is rejected and that channel is not saved
• 0% — the same prices as in the management system

The field rejects a negative value and tells you why: you would be selling on the portal below your direct price, and paying the channel commission on top. The difference can be changed whenever you like, and it applies from the following updates: it does not rewrite backwards the prices already sent.

The path, in four steps

It holds for every channel that connects on its own, long-standing or not. Airbnb skips the first step and has one of its own, explained further down.

First step — asking for activation from the app

Tap the header of the card to open it, then «Activate». A box opens asking for the «Difference %» and, for some channels, the code of your property on the portal. Nothing leaves until you tap «Activate»: you can close the box with no consequences.

Around fifteen of the smaller portals also ask for API credentials — a user name, a password or a key, sometimes all three. None of the five long-standing channels asks for them, so if you see them appear you are on a channel from the long list. It is the portal that issues them, not Vezpa: look for them in its partner area, usually under «Connectivity», «API» or «Channel manager». If you cannot find them, ask the portal's support. Once saved they stay saved: next time round the field is left empty.

Right after the request the channel moves to «Waiting for the portal»: the registration carries on by itself on the channel manager and we tell you when it is done. Registered does not mean on sale: the authorisation on the portal and the room matching are still missing.

Second step — authorising the connection from the portal

This step is done outside Vezpa, in the portal's own panel. It is the step nobody can take in your place.

No need to keep checking. While the waiting screen is open, Vezpa checks every half minute whether the portal has authorised, and moves on to the next step as soon as it has. If you close the app, you get a notification when the portal authorises; until then a reminder with the channel name stays at the top of the dashboard.

Rooms excluded from the portals. If you see an orange box with room names in OTA Management, those rooms are not sent to any channel, even when the channel is active. Rooms imported from a portal start out this way; to put them on sale, turn on “Sell this room on the portals” in the room settings.

The other channels. Channels under “Other OTA channels” also connect only after you authorise on the portal. Until then the channel appears in the “Waiting for the portal” group with the steps for choosing OTASwitch, and Vezpa notices on its own, just as for the main channels. “Open Channel Mapping” resumes the connection, “Cancel” takes it off the waiting list.

Booking.com

Before you start, keep the property details to hand: you find them in the Extranet by clicking on the property name at the top right — property name as it appears on Booking.com, property code (the numeric Property Code), first and last name of the account holder, legal identifier.

1. Sign in to the Booking.com Extranet → admin.booking.com (opens in a new tab)
2. Go to Account → Channel manager: the «Manage connections» page opens
3. Look for «OTASwitch» in the list of channel managers and select it
4. Select every feature: rates, availability, bookings
5. Leave «Extranet access» ticked: it is the permission that lets us go in and diagnose and fix problems in your place. It has nothing to do with your own access to the panel, which you do not lose anyway
6. Click «Connect»

Approving the request is down to Booking.com, not to Vezpa. A hotel or a B&B is a single property on Booking.com, with several room types inside it.

Expedia

1. Sign in to Partner Central → expediapartnercentral.com (opens in a new tab)
2. Go to Rooms and Rates → Connectivity Settings
3. In the channel manager field, look for and select «OTASwitch»
4. Confirm the connection and wait for the activation

From that moment rates and availability are managed from Vezpa: Partner Central no longer lets you change them by hand. The bookings also include Hotels.com, which belongs to the same group.

VRBO

1. Sign in to the VRBO owner panel
2. To the question «Do you use management software?» answer yes
3. When it asks which channel manager you use, select «OTASwitch»
4. Follow the Self-Service Onboarding and accept the pay-per-booking contract

VRBO has the longest onboarding of the five: activation can take up to five working days.

Agoda

1. Sign in to YCS → ycs.agoda.com (opens in a new tab)
2. Hotel or multi-unit house: Property → Property Settings → Optional Settings. Single unit: Rates and availability → Connectivity settings
3. Enable «Channel manager mode»
4. From the list of channel managers select «OTASwitch», save and wait for the confirmation

Airbnb has a path of its own

Airbnb does not ask for a property code: it asks for an authorisation from your account. Its card therefore holds a single button, «Connect Airbnb», and the actions of the other channels are not there — they are not needed, and they would not work.

1. Tap «Connect Airbnb»: the app takes you to Airbnb
2. Sign in with your account and authorise the connection
3. Airbnb gives you an «Authorisation code»: copy it and paste it into Vezpa, then tap «Continue»
4. The list «Your Airbnb listings» appears: for each one tap «Match to a room» and choose the matching Vezpa room

The code is good once only: if it expires or you have already spent it, the «Generate a new code» button makes you another one, without starting over. A listing still waiting for approval on Airbnb is flagged for what it is: stopped, and without bookings until Airbnb approves it. Matching it here does not unlock it.

Third step — matching rooms and rates

On a «Connected» channel the card shows «Channel Mapping» (on a connection that was never finished it is called «Open Channel Mapping» and leads to the same place). The page «Match rooms and rates» opens.

You will see one card for each room in the management system, and inside it one row per meal plan: Room only, Bed & Breakfast, Half board, Full board. Tap the field of a meal plan and a list opens showing in full the name of the room on the channel, the name of the rate plan and the channel codes — the codes are exactly what tells two rooms with almost identical names apart.

• A rate already picked for another meal plan does not appear again in the list: a channel rate matches one meal plan only.
• On Airbnb and VRBO each room is a listing of its own: in place of the rate you enter the listing code, and the list opens from the arrow to the right of the field.
• A meal plan left on «— Don't configure» is not put on sale, and that is legitimate: if the portal only has «Room Only», you match Room only and nothing else.
• On a room that is already matched, «Unlink from» appears with the channel name: it removes that room from this channel only, without touching the others or the prices. On a connection that is already active, its twin «Add to» puts it back.

When you are done, «Apply» in the bottom bar sends the matches to the portal together with the starting price. The outcome arrives row by row: the successful ones in green, the failed ones in red with the reason, under the meal plan they belong to.

Fourth step — the channel sells

After «Apply» the first synchronisation starts: rates, availability and restrictions (minimum stay, closures) are sent to the channel. On a property with many rooms and many dates it can take a few minutes. From then on you do nothing different from before: you write the prices in Vezpa, you register the direct bookings, you block a room, and the update leaves by itself towards every connected channel.

Even with the channel active, the first bookings can take a few days to appear: that is normal and we recover them ourselves. Bookings that arrived from the portals cannot be cancelled from the app: the cancellation is made by the guest or by the portal, and it is reflected here.

«Create your property from a portal»

It is the shortcut for those who already have the property on a portal and do not want to retype anything: you find it at the top of the page. The screen shows one pill for each of the five long-standing channels, but today the path only works for Booking.com: on the other four the portal does not answer this reading and the app tells you the channel is not supported.

1. Enter the code and nothing else in the «Property number on the portal» field. On Booking.com you find it in the extranet, next to the property name, at the top (property ID / Hotel ID). Nothing else: no password, no list of rooms.
2. We register the property on the channel manager and ask for the connection. That is the request you then authorise from your own extranet.
3. Tap «Read from the channel»: we read rooms, capacities, meal plans and photos.
4. You look at the preview «Here is what would be created», split into Rooms, Meal plans, Photos, Room mapping and Differences to check.
5. You confirm with «Create everything»: until you tap it nothing is written in Vezpa, and afterwards every value stays editable.

The rooms that get created do not go on sale: they are born as drafts excluded from the portals, so you can complete prices and details calmly; when they are ready you remove the exclusion. Rooms already present in Vezpa are neither touched nor duplicated.

Then there are two waits, different from one another, and neither of them is an error:

• The authorisation of the connection — usually 5–10 minutes are enough; some channels can take hours or days. It is neither a fixed nor a guaranteed time, and it is the portal that approves, not Vezpa. You do not have to stay on the screen: the request stays in progress and you come back whenever you like.
• The linking of the rooms after the prices are sent — when the rate plans have only just been created, the channel usually needs 1–2 minutes to tie them to the rooms. If you read «Try again in a couple of minutes» it really is a wait, and what has already been created is not duplicated.

«Import from OTA»: rooms and photos already published

If you already had an active listing on Booking.com or Airbnb, there is no need to recreate the rooms by hand. With the channel «Connected», its card shows «Import from OTA» (the same button is called «Import rooms and photos» on the last screen of the guided connection).

• It reads name and capacity of every room not yet present in Vezpa from the channel, and creates it.
• It downloads the photos already published and puts them in the gallery. They arrive in the background: they can take a few minutes to appear.
• It is create-only: rooms already present are neither touched nor duplicated, and running it again creates no doubles.

If the import finds more rooms than your plan includes, the rooms are all there anyway: the box warns you that the charge will change at the next renewal, exactly as if you had created them by hand.

«Link the rooms»: when bookings land in the wrong place

Every room sold on a portal has an identifier the portal uses to name it when it sends a booking. If that identifier is not written on the right room, the bookings can end up in the wrong room: it happens above all to those who created the rooms before connecting the channel, because the portal code means nothing to Vezpa. The «Link the rooms» screen puts it right; you open it from the button of the same name inside the channel card, and it is reserved for the Manager (the page, on the other hand, also opens for the Assistant: the restriction belongs to this feature, not to the path).

Where the bookings already received give enough evidence, «Suggestions to confirm» holds a proposed match. For each one you see how confident it is (strong, medium or weak match), the reasons — observed price, capacity, name similarity — and the alternatives considered and discarded, each with its own why. Nothing starts pre-selected: no code is written until you confirm it yourself with «Save links».

• «To link by hand» gathers the portal rooms for which the signals are not enough: there you have the evidence in front of you (bookings seen, dates, guests, average price per night) and you choose.
• «Already linked» shows the existing links: «Pick a different room» moves the link, «Unlink» removes it and frees the portal room for another room type. Before confirming you always see which room the code will be taken from.
• The «Overwrite existing codes» tick is there to replace an existing code: without it, rooms that already carry a different one are not touched.
• It works by room type, not by single room: the portal does not sell «room 3», it sells «a double». The exception is whoever sells each room on its own, where the link concerns the single room.

«View details»: how far the connection got

Every channel card holds the «View details» button. It opens the ladder of the connection: seven steps, with the ones already confirmed, the step where the connection stopped — with what we managed to read and what to do — and whose turn it is: «Your turn», «Vezpa is on it» or «Waiting for the channel». It is there on every channel and in every status, even in «Checking…».

Two things to keep in mind. The steps above the one that stopped are unknown, not failed: we have not been able to check them yet, and it does not mean they went wrong. And it is only a reading: opening it sends nothing to the channel and changes nothing, so you can reopen it as often as you like.

The other OTA channels

Below the five cards, «Other OTA channels» gathers around sixty portals. They are grouped into «Active» (the ones already selling for you, with the percentage difference applied), «Available» (the channel manager has already connected them, but you have not switched them on yet) and «Recommended». The rest stays closed behind «Show all other channels», with the number in brackets.

On these channels «Activate» leads to the same path as the five long-standing ones: property code, matching of rooms and meal plans, «Apply». On a channel that is already active, «Edit percentage» changes the price difference alone, without going through the matching again.

If a channel does not connect on its own

Not every portal opens automatically. For some of them the channel manager does not open the connection at all: in the list you recognise them by the note «No automatic connection» and by the «Ask us to activate it» button in place of «Activate». Write to us naming the channel: we take care of it and tell you what is needed. It is not a dead end, it is a slower path.

The same goes for the comparison sites (Trivago, TripAdvisor, Google and the like): they do not sell rooms, they show your direct rate next to the OTA ones and send visitors to your site. They do not switch on from here either, and they also carry «Ask us to activate it»: the card explains what a comparison site is before asking you.

The two boxes at the top of the page

They appear only when something is wrong, and they are the first thing to look at when they do.

• Updates not accepted — the red box lists the price or availability changes the channel refused, with the channel, the room and the period to check again. Those are the cases where the portal is still selling on old terms. The «Resync failed updates» button sends them all again.
• Missing bookings — the orange box lists the bookings that are on the channel but never arrived here. Each row has «Recover», and at the bottom there is «Recover all».

If one of the two checks does not succeed, in place of the box you find a line saying so and a way to try again: a failed check must not look like «everything is fine».

How to check that it really works

A «Connected» channel says the connection is there, not that the portal is selling on the right terms. Three checks, once only, right after the first connection.

1. The prices. Open the portal and look at the rate calendar: they must match yours, with the percentage difference applied. Look at different dates — today, next week, next month — because a price gap only shows where it is.
2. The availability. The dates that are sold or blocked in Vezpa must be closed on the portal too.
3. A test change. Change the price of a future date, wait a few minutes and check the portal again.

Summary: which channel manager to select

Channel	Where you select it	Name to select
Booking.com	Account → Channel manager	OTASwitch
Airbnb	Authorisation from your account	OTASwitch
Expedia	Rooms and Rates → Connectivity Settings	OTASwitch
VRBO	Onboarding → Management software	OTASwitch
Agoda	Property Settings → Channel manager mode	OTASwitch
All the others	Varies by channel	OTASwitch

Before connecting: the portal restarts from your calendar

On a channel that is not yet connected — and in the preview of the creation from a portal too — an orange box can appear, titled with the channel name: «Booking.com will stay still until you finish». The reason is a fact about the portal, not about us: when you accept the connection, the portal wipes its own calendar and publishes the Vezpa one as it stands at that moment.

The box lists what is still missing from yours — rooms on sale, availability, prices, currency — and those are the points to complete before accepting, so that the portal never stands still. It blocks nothing: you can connect anyway, and the warning only serves to let you choose the right order.

But if the box does not appear, that is not a confirmation: either your calendar is already ready, or the information is not available — app not updated, reading failed. Not seeing it does not mean «all good».

No prices, no connection

A room with not a single price in the sales period would stay closed for the whole period once connected to a portal: on days without a price the channel manager sends a closure. That's why Vezpa won't activate the channel or match an Airbnb listing until that room has a price: the warning tells you which rooms are missing one and “Go set them” takes you to Rates. If only some days are missing you can still connect, knowing those days stay closed on the portals too.

Bookings already taken on the portal: put them in first

The same box also asks for the bookings you have already taken on that portal: it appears when we see signs that your listing is already live over there and we know of no future booking of yours from that channel. It is the case that costs the most: if those dates are free in Vezpa, on connection the portal puts them back on sale and you end up with a second booking on the same room.

Put them in before connecting — by reading the portal's iCal calendar, or by hand — and the warning disappears by itself. They cannot be recovered from the channel manager: it only delivers the bookings that arrived after the connection, and no button exists that could go and fetch the earlier ones.

Different capacity on the portal

In the channel card, with Booking.com connected, a light blue box titled «Different capacity on the portal» can appear. It lists the rooms for which the portal applies a different capacity from the one set in Vezpa: for instance it accepts at most two adults where in Vezpa the room takes three guests.

It is not an error, and it is light blue on purpose: it is information. Selling and synchronisation carry on as before; the box only tells you that the two numbers do not coincide, so that you do not discover it from a booking that does not fit. Vezpa cannot correct it: the capacity on the portal is changed from the Booking.com extranet, and changing the one on the room here does not touch the one over there.

And if the box is not there, that is not a confirmation: it does not appear when the two capacities match, but it does not appear either when Vezpa cannot read them from the portal — reading failed, a channel that does not expose them, no comparable room.

«Listings without a match»: create them new, or match them to yours?

If the portal has listings that match none of your rooms and you have rooms not yet matched to that channel, the preview stops and asks you before creating anything: create the listings as new rooms, or match them to the rooms you already have.

If you create them as new, you may end up with two rooms for the same apartment; if you match them, the portal links up with the rooms you already have. The names do not have to coincide: what matters to the portal is the match, not what you call your rooms. And the choice does not tie you down: in the meantime you can create rooms by hand, and when the listings arrive you decide.

Rooms left without a match do not sell

At the end of the matching, if some room was left with no row that went through, the final screen lists it by name: it is not put on sale on that channel. It is not an error and it is a legitimate condition — you can complete the matching whenever you like, by reopening the same screen from the channel card.

The opposite also holds: if any rate plans of the portal were left without a match, we list them for you. On those plans the channel will receive neither prices nor availability from Vezpa.

A single successful row is enough for the channel to become active: we do not hold back what has worked. If instead no row goes through, the channel is not activated and the app tells you so in those words.

If some property details are missing

To register the property the channel manager demands a few details: name, address, email, phone and the position on the map. If one of them is missing the registration does not start — and the app lists them for you one by one, with the «See the missing details» button. It takes you to the property details, where you complete them in a single trip; as soon as nothing is missing any more the request starts again by itself and you find yourself where you were, without retyping the code.

«This property is already linked to another channel manager connection»

The code you entered is right. The property on the portal is still attached to an earlier channel manager connection: another property, or an old account. That connection has to be released first; while it stays active, every new attempt will give the same outcome. Trying again without releasing it changes nothing.

The capacity of the room on the channel manager

On the channel manager the room is a single one, shared by every connected portal. Its capacity is the highest of the places that the various portals sell: it can therefore be higher than the one on a single portal, and that is fine — each portal goes on selling for the places it knows. If that number matches none of the portals you have connected, it is worth a look by hand.

If the registration does not succeed

The app always says whose problem it is, because the answer is different in the two cases.

• Our problem — nothing reached the portal. We are already on it and we write to you as soon as you can try again: there is no move of yours that would help here, and the card does not even offer «Retry».
• A detail to correct — the portal does not recognise the code you entered. Check it in the extranet and enter it again, then retry: this time «Retry» is there, and it takes you back to the code step.

A connection that only partly succeeded shows the list of the rooms that did not go through, with the same criterion.

When the channel is in «Checking…»

It means we could not read the real status from the channel manager — not that the channel is disconnected. While it lasts, the card does not offer «Disable» (a destructive gesture on an uncertain status is the worst thing there is) and does not offer «Channel Mapping», which needs a confirmed connection. What remains is «Retry», which reads the status again, «View details» and «Link the rooms», which works on local data and does not go through the channel manager.

Several properties in the same account

If your account holds several properties, the connection concerns the selected one, and the channel card writes it out for you. Each property has its own code on the portal and its own matches: connecting one does not connect the others.

The channel manager connects the main portals — Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, VRBO, Agoda and dozens of dynamic channels — but not every portal talks to a channel manager. Some, like penziony.cz or megaubytko.cz, only accept an iCal address: a link that publishes the room's calendar, which the portal re-reads on its own at regular intervals.

You'll find the list of your rooms under Configuration → OTA Channels → iCal calendars.

When a new booking arrives we notify you, just as for the portals connected through the channel manager: one notification per check, not one per booking — if the portal publishes five at once, the notification is a single one and says how many there are. Tapping it opens the «Calendar» tab, which has meanwhile already refreshed on its own. If instead there is only one booking, the notification names it: the dates of the stay, plus the guest name and the number of guests when the portal publishes them in the calendar. Not the price, and that is not our choice: an iCal calendar carries no amounts. Tapping the notification of a single booking opens that booking directly.

We also notify you when a booking disappears from the portal and we cancel it. If a booking is no longer in the portal's calendar, we cancel it just like a Booking.com cancellation, even if someone had already worked on it or the stay has already started, and its nights go back on sale: you get a notification with the same rule as for new ones — one per check, naming the booking if there is only one and saying how many if there are more — and the same notice stays in «Actions Summary». Tapping it opens the «Calendar» tab, where you see the nights that are free again. The cases we cannot close on our own do not go this way: they end up in «Needs a decision», with a notice of their own.

The first reading of a newly connected calendar is silent, and that is deliberate. That first pass does not bring one booking: it brings the portal's whole history at once, and notifying you for each would mean a burst of notifications on the day you connect. Notifications start from the next check, that is, from when a booking is genuinely new.

Publishing a room

Tap «Publish» on the room you want to share: the page generates two links.

Copying and using the link

Next to each link there's a copy button. Paste the base link into the portal's «iCal URL» (or «Import calendar») field; paste the full link into your personal calendar, using «Add by URL». The portal re-reads the calendar on its own, at regular intervals: there's no need to paste it again afterwards.

Regenerating a key

The regenerate button next to each link creates a new key and immediately turns off the previous one: whoever had the old link stops reading the calendar. Use it if you suspect a link reached someone who shouldn't have it, or if you've stopped working with a portal. Regenerating the base link doesn't affect the full link, and vice versa.

Read from other portals

You can also go the other way: read the calendar of a portal that doesn't go through the channel manager. On the same page, under each room, you'll find the «Read from other portals» block.

On the portal, look for the address of its iCal calendar — usually under an entry like «Export calendar», «iCal export» or «Calendar URL» — and copy it. In Vezpa tap «Add calendar» and fill in «Portal name» and «Calendar address (.ics)»: from that moment we read it for you.

If a booking disappears from the portal's calendar we cancel it, and if the portal moves its dates we move them in Vezpa too: just as with Booking.com, even if you've already worked on it (guests registered, payments, tax, manual changes). The board and prices you set stay on the nights that don't change. If instead the portal suddenly returns an empty calendar, we don't cancel anything and we alert you anyway: it usually means the connection has expired or been reset by the portal, not that the bookings are really gone.

A booking that arrives on dates already sold doesn't overwrite anything: it ends up in the calendar's Exceptions row, so you see it and decide how to resolve the conflict.

If you'd already entered this portal's bookings by hand for these dates, it's normal to find them among the Exceptions at the first update after connecting: it's the same booking seen twice — the one entered by hand and the one just read from the calendar — just keep one.

You can disable or delete a linked calendar at any time: bookings already imported stay where they are, they aren't deleted.

An .ics calendar can say one thing only: busy from this day to that day. It doesn't say how many rooms are left, it doesn't carry prices, it confirms nothing, and it doesn't even have a way to say «this booking was cancelled»: the entry simply isn't there any more. It is a slower and blinder link than a channel manager, and choosing it is a trade: you reach a portal that would otherwise stay out, and in exchange you give up everything else.

It isn't instant, it's scheduled. We read every linked calendar every half hour: for up to thirty minutes a booking just taken on the portal doesn't exist for us yet, and those nights still look free. With a channel manager the booking arrives the moment it is made.

An empty calendar is ambiguous, and it stays ambiguous. When the portal answers with a calendar that holds no occupancy at all, the two possible explanations — «they cancelled everything» and «the link is broken» — produce exactly the same file, and we have no way to tell them apart. So we cancel nothing and we ask you, because you can open the portal.

With a single room this isn't the rare case, it's the normal one. If the calendar holds one booking and the portal removes it, that calendar becomes empty: it is exactly the ambiguous situation above, and the decision falls to you every time. With several linked rooms it happens less often, because one other booking is enough to keep the calendar populated.

Cancelling on the portal doesn't close the case. If a booking ended up in «Needs a decision», it had already been removed from the portal — that is exactly why we asked you. Removing it again changes nothing: the case is closed from Vezpa, with one of the two buttons.

Closed dates, if the portal publishes them. Some portals export into the calendar the dates you have closed too, not just the bookings — often it is a checkbox to switch on in their own settings. When they arrive, Vezpa treats them as closures: those nights show as closed in the calendar, they don't become bookings. If one of those nights was already sold it stays with the guest and you get a notice. If later on the portal sends you a booking on exactly those dates, the booking takes precedence and the night reopens on its own; a booking that you enter by hand, on the other hand, overrides nothing: on a night closed by the portal you have to remove the closure from the calendar first, with «Delete block».

None of this is an excuse: it is the description of a tool with a legitimate use — the portals a channel manager doesn't reach — that has to be used knowing what it does and what it doesn't. If the portal you care about talks to a channel manager, link it from there: that route is faster and has none of these ambiguities.

We read the calendar of every linked portal every half hour and treat it like a channel such as Booking.com: if a booking disappears from that calendar we cancel it, and if its dates change we change them, even if you had already worked on it or the guest has already arrived. But «gone» doesn't always mean «cancelled»: a calendar can come back empty because the key has expired or because the portal had an outage, and cancelling at that moment would be a disaster. The cases we can't close on our own end up in a list that waits for you: «Needs a decision».

You'll find it at the top of Configuration → OTA Channels → iCal calendars, and it only appears when there is really something waiting. You also get there by tapping the notification that asks you to check some bookings.

What happens if you do nothing

• The portal's calendar came back completely empty. We won't cancel anything until that calendar answers again, no matter how many updates go by: the dates stay occupied.
• The portal is still answering, but more than half of the known bookings disappeared at once. This time we cancel nothing; if it's still missing at the next reading, it will be cancelled.

Older rows may carry a generic reason — flagged before we started recording why. There we promise nothing: look at the portal. And if under the name you read «No room assigned», that booking never landed in any room and lives in the calendar's Exceptions row.

The two gestures

• «Keep it» — changes nothing. The booking stays exactly as it is and the case leaves the list; if the portal changes something again on that booking, the case comes back.
• «Accept the cancellation» — the booking is cancelled the way a channel does it: the row stays in the history marked cancelled, the totals go to zero and the nights become free again.

«Kept by me»: the decision can be undone

When you press «Keep it» the booking doesn't disappear: it moves to the second view of the list, «Kept by me», which you open with the switch at the top of the section. It stays there until the stay is over, and it carries a single button: «Actually, cancel it», which does exactly what «Accept the cancellation» would have done. It is the only way you have to cancel a booking that came from a portal: the normal cancellation on the booking refuses it, and removing it again on the portal is useless — it had already been removed there, and that is why we asked you.

Who can decide

The two buttons are reserved for the Manager and the Assistant, the same people who get the notification. The other roles that reach the page see the list and the reasons, but instead of the buttons they read whose decision it is. The Observer does not reach this page.

When you connect your first channel — Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, VRBO or one of the other channels, or Airbnb — a «Sales period» sheet opens before the connection. It asks from when you want to sell, and then closes the nights that must not be sold. For the following channels, once a sales period has been chosen, the same sheet comes back as a reminder: it tells you which period you are already selling, and you either confirm it or tap «Change». «Change» starts again from the period in force and does not reopen nights that are already blocked: if some of them have a price, the sheet tells you, and you reopen them from «Calendar». The choice applies to the whole property, not to a single channel. Changing the percentage difference of an already active channel does not show it.

• «Sell from»: Vezpa suggests the first day with a price from tomorrow on, and you can change it. The nights before that date are closed, even if they have a price.
• Inside the period, nights without a price are closed: a night is sold only if it has a price.
• Annual calendar: it also asks «Sell until». The publication limit then becomes 10 January of the following year (never more than about two years from today, never shorter than the current one). The days between your end date and that limit stay closed; when you reopen them from «Calendar» they are published immediately.
• Continuous calendar: no end date is asked. The limit extends by itself every night.

Before you confirm with «Close and continue» you see a preview for each room: how many nights will be closed, and why. Booked nights and nights under maintenance are never touched.

If there are nights without a price in the period, the sheet tells you in orange: they will stay closed on the portal. With “Go to Rates” you leave the connection for later and go set your prices; if no room has a price at all, Vezpa does not connect the channel.

Nothing is final. The closed nights are blocks like the ones you make by hand, and you reopen them from «Calendar» with «Restore Availability».

In the matching you pick, for each room and each meal plan, the rate that corresponds to it on the portal. When you press «Apply» we send the matches to the portal together with the starting price, and from then on the channel can sell. Nothing goes out to the guests: it is a configuration, not a message.

A room left without a match is not an error: it simply is not put on sale on that channel. At the end the summary screen lists the rooms left out, so you know what is missing. You can complete the matching whenever you like, by reopening the matching from the channel card.

If a row does not go through, you find it marked in red under the meal plan it belongs to, with the reason: correct that one and try again. What had already gone through stays as it is and is not sent twice.

• I activated the channel but it does not sell. Activating is only the first of the four steps: look at the status pill. If it says «Waiting for the portal» your authorisation in the extranet is missing; if it says «To be completed» the connection never started and you pick it up again from here.
• The channel says «To be completed» and I have already authorised on the portal. They are two different things: «To be completed» means no request ever reached the portal. Pick the connection up again from the card, then authorise.
• I changed a price and nothing changes on the portal. Check that you completed the matching, that the channel is «Connected», and wait 5-10 minutes: propagation is not instant on every channel. If the red box at the top lists updates that were not accepted, tap «Resync failed updates».
• The portal bookings end up in the wrong room. It happens to those who created the rooms before connecting the channel. Open «Link the rooms» from the channel card: the next ones will arrive in the right place, the ones already in the house do not move.
• A booking is on the portal but not in Vezpa. Look at the orange box at the top: if it is there, tap «Recover» on that row or «Recover all».
• I received two bookings on the same room. The most frequent cause is a wrong match: a Vezpa room tied to the wrong room on the portal. The second is a channel manager other than OTASwitch selected on the portal, which keeps the channel out of the availability updates.
• The matching does not show the channel rooms. Check that the rooms are active and published on the portal (not drafts) and that OTASwitch is selected on the portal: without that, there is nothing to read.
• The channel has been in «Checking…» for a while. Tap «Retry» to read the status again, and «View details» to find out which step it stopped at. «Disable» does not appear on purpose while the status is uncertain.
• I cannot find «Import from OTA». It only appears on Booking.com and Airbnb, and only when the channel is really connected. Complete the matching first.
• «Create your property from a portal» tells me the channel is not supported. That path works with Booking.com today. On the other portals use «Import from OTA» after connecting the channel.
• A button answers that the operation is not mine. The actions on the channels are reserved for the Manager. The Assistant opens the page and reads everything, but does not activate, match or import.
• I cannot find «OTASwitch» in the portal's list. Stop and write to us: selecting another channel manager would connect the property to a system that is not ours.
• My portal does not appear in any list. Some portals the channel manager does not open by itself: you recognise them by «No automatic connection» and by «Ask us to activate it». Others do not go through a channel manager at all, and are reached with the iCal calendars.
• I cancelled an OTA booking and the app will not let me. That is deliberate: portal bookings are cancelled from the portal or by the guest, and the cancellation reaches us by itself.