The onset of COVID-19 forced many hoteliers to seek new technologies to help them provide a safe and healthy environment for guests. No innovation has proven to be more in demand than contactless check-in solutions, which help hotels meet emerging CDC and AHLA guidelines aimed to prevent physical contact between front-desk agents and guests.
Almost immediately after the guidelines were issued in April, contactless solutions moved to the forefront. Some were born from tech providers already operating in the space, others were new entrants into the hospitality vertical. All quickly learned that, to provide the best experience for both hotel operator and guest, their solutions must be integrated with the PMS.
Hoping to scale fast, most contactless providers inevitably began eyeing integration with the PMS suppliers with the largest global footprint. In most cases, this led them to Oracle’s Opera Property Management System, where they soon learned that integrations require a good bit of time, money and resources.
In lieu of building directly to Opera, an alternative, perhaps smarter option is building one integration that allows a supplier to connect with many hotels from one single end point. That’s exactly the solution Hapi provides. Hapi is a cloud data hub that aims to eliminate barriers to innovation by reducing integration costs and increasing vendor alignment. By building to Hapi’s single API, suppliers immediately have access to Oracle APIs from many PMS instances at one end point, whether on premise or in the cloud.
Hapi has been integrated with Opera through an Opera Exchange Interface (OXI) for years. This allows technology built to Hapi’s API to exchange some basic data with the PMS. Before contactless check-in solutions went mainstream, an Opera OXI connection solved the majority of data-sharing needs.
Hapi Goes OWS
More recently, however – spurred by the need to perform more complicated tasks – Hapi has taken the extra step to build and certify a new type of integration with Opera called Opera Web Services (OWS). An OWS integration allows a third-party provider to send and receive more complicated tasks. For example, an OWS integration allows a contactless check-in provider to send credit card authorization or check a guest in or out.
The Hapi-OWS integration encompasses guest name and information, and reservation information. It supports around 20 operations that are necessary to provide full check-in and check-out functionality, including the ability to fetch arrivals by date and profile, access guest membership IDs, add reservation comments and special requests, update payment methods, and much more. It allows the transfer of guest profile information, including contact information, preferences and privacy options.
For example, perhaps a guest booked a room on their company credit card, but when they arrive they need to add a personal credit card. Or maybe they need to add personal information that was missing from their original booking. All of this can be done through Hapi’s OWS integration to Opera. Most importantly, though, it allows guests to check in through a third-party application.
Integrating to Hapi is simple, cost effective and quick. And once you’ve built one integration, you’re immediately able to send data back and forth between multiple systems. Hapi’s team is made up of hospitality veterans, meaning support staff will understand your needs and be able to provide the best solutions.
To test out Hapi’s integrations and ensure they meet your needs, give our new sandbox PMS a try. Or download a spec sheet to generate an API client in whatever language you write in. By integrating with Hapi, you’re sure to cut development time down significantly.
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