Frequently Asked Questions about Expedia

If the reservation is "Expedia Collect", then that means that an Expedia Virtual Card (EVC) is created for the reservation. These cards are not valid until check-in. Generally, payment gateways and processors will not retain cards that are not valid. Therefore, your payment gateway or processor will prevent ThinkReservations from retaining EVC cards unless it's a same-day reservation. If you are willing to accept additional risks, it may be possible for your payment gateway or processor to relax some security features to allow EVC cards to be retained. Please reach out to them for more details.

If you have your Expedia account set up for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), no credit card will be provided, as these reservations will be paid out directly to your bank account through EFT. If your Expedia account is set up this way, only "Expedia Collect" reservations will be handled this way.

There are also instances where a "Hotel Collect" reservation won't have a valid card. Expedia has a feature that allows guests to book last-minute reservations without a credit card. The reservation in Expedia Partner Central will let you know if this is the case. Please take a look at the image below. Please contact Expedia if you want to opt out of this program.
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When an Expedia Hotel Collect reservation is made, Expedia does not verify the credit card. Instead, Expedia checks whether or not it appears to be a credit card number. Then Expedia sends the reservation information to ThinkReservations, and it is created in your account. It is not until the reservation is confirmed and brought through the ThinkReservations Channel Manager that the credit card information is sent to your processor to validate the card and, if applicable, charge the deposit. If your payment processor finds that the card is not valid or if the charge is declined, the following will occur automatically:

ThinkReservations emails you that an Expedia reservation came through with an invalid card.

You have some options in these cases:

This can occur if additional child guest fees or max occupancy is not set correctly in your Expedia account. Expedia receives information from ThinkReservations regarding additional guest fees for adults only. Expedia does not receive information from ThinkReservations regarding additional child guest fees or max occupancy. If these are not configured in your Expedia account, the following example can occur:

A guest makes a single-night reservation for two adults and one child to stay in a room that is normally $150 per night, double occupancy. The additional child fee is configured in ThinkReservations as $50 per child per night. Because additional child guest fees were not configured in Expedia, the guest was able to make the reservation for $150. When the reservation is received with a total paid of $150 for three guests, ThinkReservations will allocate $50 for the child. The result will appear as if the room rate were $100 and the additional guest fee was $50, as intended, for the total price of $150.

In order to prevent this, and other potential policy inconsistencies it is important to make sure all of the following are configured in your Expedia account, as this information is not synced:

You can set up the child fees within Expedia Partner Central. Please contact Expedia if you need assistance.

Below are some common scenarios where a reservation from Expedia has a room rate lower than expected.

The "Fenced MOD" or "Fenced Booking Percentage" is the Fenced Members Only Deal. It is "Fenced" because only guests who have signed up for Expedia's loyalty program and are logged in while searching can view it. You would never be able to see the discount on a major search engine or Expedia if you were not signed up and logged in. A 10% Fenced Members Only Deal is included in most of Expedia's agreements, but the hotel partners can pause it or add blackout dates. The property must contact Expedia's Market Management Team to do this. Most deals are packaged when guests simultaneously book airfare, train, or car rental as their overnight accommodations.

However, guests who book with this tend to stay longer and cancel less often. Offering this also boosts the hotel's score, and members can filter only to see properties providing it, so it ensures that the property won't get filtered out. Properties near the airport generally receive the most benefits.

The ThinkReservations channel manager sends the following information to Expedia as part of our connection:

The above are all controlled from the Rates & Restrictions tab of your OTA(S) rate in ThinkReservations. Expedia sends information to ThinkReservations about bookings when they are made, updated, or canceled.

The ThinkReservations Channel Manager only sends rates, availability, and restrictions. Expedia controls everything else, including, but not limited to:

You can verify and change some settings in your EPC. Others, Expedia will need to verify and/or change for you. Expedia support will help you if you have questions.

There are many settings in Expedia. It's important to note that ThinkReservations does not control, limit, or make these settings visible. Your connection to ThinkReservations will not affect these settings. If you have any questions about setting or managing any of the above, please don't hesitate to contact Expedia support.

If you want Expedia to send you the guest's real email address, you can request this information from Expedia. Expedia considers the guest's real email "sensitive guest information". For this to be passed along to you, Expedia must first approve it. You'll need to reach out directly to Expedia to request this to be enabled for your account. These requests are often denied more than approved, so set your expectations accordingly.

You may notice that Expedia reservations have an email alias that ends in @m.expediapartnercentral.com. You can learn more about the alias here: About the Guest Alias. PMS systems, including ThinkReservations, are not allowed to use this email address at this time. Expedia expects you to copy and paste the email address into your mail system. Please look here for instructions on how to do that: Use the Guest Email Alias.

If Expedia won't let you get the real guest's email address, you have an alternative option. In Expedia Partner Central, you can set up email rules to send the guests who have booked through Expedia one or several automated emails, similar to how you set up email rules in ThinkReservations. See here for more: Send Scheduled Messages to Expedia Guests

ThinkReservations understands that it's essential to have the contact information for your guests, so we suggest contacting the guest directly to update the guest information you have on file. You can create a new email template in your ThinkReservations account (or on Expedia) that can be sent to guests after seeing their Expedia reservation come through. We have a sample that we think you'll find helpful to get you started, located here: Expedia Information Request Email

If you need a refresher on creating new email templates, please click here: Create a New Email Template or Submit a ticket and let us know you'd like the Expedia Info Request Template set up.

Nothing happens in Expedia if you cancel a reservation within ThinkReservations. This is because Expedia doesn't allow ThinkReservations to cancel a reservation or make any changes to the reservation. Guests should cancel their reservation through the channel where it was initially created. When a guest cancels via Expedia (or the Expedia site they used), several actions occur:

If an Expedia guest calls you directly to cancel, you must have the guest cancel with Expedia. Expedia does not allow you to cancel reservations after 72 hours and before the check-in date. If they do not, you will still be charged the commission because the reservation was still active on Expedia. Please feel free to ask Expedia to contact the guest to cancel the reservation.

This occurs when a reservation was made before your connection with ThinkReservations' channel manager. ThinkReservations does not have a direct connection to those imported reservations; therefore, the reservation will remain active in Think. You should log in to your Expedia account to verify the details, look up the reservation in your ThinkReservations account, properly cancel the bill, and add any applicable cancellation fees or refunds.

If you or your staff mark a reservation as a "no-show" on Expedia, it will need to be manually updated in ThinkReservations, as Expedia doesn't consider a no-show a cancellation and, therefore, doesn't tell ThinkReservations.

As with cancellations, guests must modify their reservations in Expedia. If changes are only made through ThinkReservations, the reservation will revert the next time a sync is completed. This is why you should never modify an OTA reservation. Please ask the guest to update their reservation with Expedia or the Expedia site where they booked. If they wish to extend their reservation, we recommend creating a new, separate reservation in ThinkReservations for the extended days. Alternatively, you could ask the guest to cancel their reservation through Expedia and make the revised reservation directly with you. This has the added benefit of saving you from paying commissions.

Any additional items, amenities, or nights they may purchase should be charged separately from their OTA reservation. You can use the reservation notes, such as Special Accommodations, to note the other invoice with the guest's charges. This will ensure you are not paying a commission for items or services not brought to ThinkReservations via the channel manager, and that the charges won't be lost if the reservation is updated. Notes are not cleared when a reservation updates, but additional items you add to an OTA reservation might be removed during the next update.

As long as your listing shows up accurately on Expedia.com, the connection from the ThinkReservations site is working correctly. Please contact Expedia support if you have issues with their partner sites, such as Hotwire.com, which requires a separate signup.

For Trivago, you must contact them or Expedia directly to set up your listing.

No. You can select the Room Type to map and choose which rooms you want to make available. If you wish to map individual rooms, you can still do this or a combination. There is a lot of flexibility here.

You can control this in Expedia Partner Central. It's set per room, per rate plan. If you don't update this in Expedia, their default is 500 days. Guests can book as far out as your synced Rate Type allows, unlike what you have set in the ThinkReservations booking engine. Alternatively, if you do not set a maximum, you can utilize a Yield Management Plan to increase the rates for reservations booked far in advance. This is the preferred method so that you don't turn away guests who want to book in advance; if they do, they have to book at a premium set by you. Even if the price is double, it's better than telling the guests they cannot book. You aren't forcing them to pay a higher price, but if you prevent the booking, you are forcing them to book elsewhere.

We will usually email you when this happens if we can't fix it automatically. The most common reason why this occurs is an outage with Expedia. If you have room types with multiple rooms associated with them, then you can experience reservations failing to come in because the guest is going to have to 'room hop' (a.k.a. the guest has to change rooms during their stay). Much like all OTAs, Expedia sells your room types based on a numeric 'Inventory' value for the given date. They don't know that the inventory you have available for a given room type isn't for the same unit.

Expedia has two different methods for reading restrictions coming from ThinkReservations: Arrival-based and Stay-through-based.

If you use room types with multiple rooms in ThinkReservations, we recommend setting up your Expedia account for a stay-through-based method. If you sell rooms individually, we recommend an arrival-based method, but please keep in mind the limitations.

Yes, however, all items must be replicated in Expedia and ThinkReservations. For example, let's say you would like a $50 resort fee for every Expedia reservation. The $50 Resort Fee must be created in ThinkReservations under Settings > Items and added to your OTA rate type's Details tab. The $50 Resort Fee must also be added to your account in Expedia Partner Central. ThinkReservations and Expedia must have this resort fee configured for your guests to expect it and to be added to their bill. If you need assistance adding the item or fee to your Expedia account, please contact your Expedia Market Manager. If you need assistance adding it to ThinkReservations, let us know.

Yes, you will need to work with Expedia to ensure that all of your business's taxes are set up and applied as required.

If Expedia is collecting and remitting the collected taxes, you will want to ensure those taxes do not appear on the bill in ThinkReservations. This is because you don't want to charge your guests taxes that have already been paid. This can be done manually on each affected reservation by going to Actions > Edit Tax Exempt Policy > Select either All taxes exempt, or Specific taxes exempt > If you choose Specific taxes exempt, make sure to check the box for the tax(es) that you want to be exempted. You can also set up a special Rate Type where the taxes that are normally applied are overridden and not included for Expedia Collect Reservations. Please reach out to ThinkReservations support if you need help.

The most significant reason properties connect to Expedia is that Expedia can bring in reservations you probably would not have gotten on your own. Using OTAs can even help boost your property's availability to potential guests when searching online. This is because of Expedia's large audience and people's trust and loyalty. We aim to put you in the driver's seat so you can control the OTAs to benefit you by booking as many rooms as possible while maximizing your profits.

Please check out our webinar: Have Your Way with the OTAs.

Generally, guests who book through an OTA will not visit your website. Therefore, they don't know that the pricing and policies you offer on your website differ from what they see on the OTA. It's not common knowledge that properties pay hefty commissions to accept these reservations. However, you have quite a bit of control over your OTA reservations. You can only provide availability for rooms and dates when you need help. If you get an OTA reservation, it's because you offered the OTA availability for that room and date. You are not forced to give the OTA any availability. You also set the price. If you don't like the net rate you get after commissions for OTA reservations, you can adjust it to ensure you are still netting a profit for OTA reservations. If you aren't, you have incorrectly set your rates and availability.

That said, a prospective guest will sometimes navigate to your site. Also, you want to prevent guests who start on your side from going back to the OTA to book. This is done by having a sort of "book-direct" campaign on your website and advertising your property and website. Here are some tips:

Expedia Virtual Cards are valid 30-180 days from the guest's departure date. You can find the Expedia Virtual Card within Expedia Partner Central using the Expedia Virtual Card Look Up tool on the home page or by looking up the reservation. If you have questions about the Expedia Virtual Card, you can find them in the Expedia Partner Central Help Center.

Should you need assistance with new Expedia Virtual Card bookings/issues, please contact Expedia at virtualcardss@expedia.com and have a new case opened.

If you'd like to disconnect Expedia, please reach out to ThinkReservations support for help.
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Please note that disconnecting Expedia from ThinkReservations will stop the communication of rate, availability, and restriction data from ThinkReservations to Expedia. Also, it will stop the communication of cancellations, reservation updates, and new reservations from Expedia to ThinkReservations.

Disconnecting Expedia from ThinkReservations will not remove any rate, availability, or restriction data at Expedia or cancel your Expedia account. If you wish to cancel Expedia, you will need to contact them for assistance.