Understanding and managing Check Tour Availability webhooks

Where do I find it?

Configuration > System & Setup > Check Availability Webhooks

What does it mean?

This guide will explain what availability webhooks are in TourCMS and how to configure them. These webhooks allow TourCMS to accurately check tour availability directly from various external booking or reservation systems.

What is an availability webhook and when is it used?

An availability webhook acts as a direct line between TourCMS and your external booking system. It's triggered when a customer, typically on an Online Travel Agent (OTA) or your own website, selects a tour and date, enters the number of tickets, and proceeds to a final availability/pricing check before confirming a booking.

At this point, TourCMS will send a request to your connected external system via the webhook URL. Your system is then expected to respond, indicating which of the requested dates are available and, optionally, the total price to be charged to the client.

For more information, please visit our official API documentation here.

This functionality can be used in conjunction with our various "Managing dates and prices outside of TourCMS" APIs and booking transfer webhooks to help keep TourCMS synchronised with your third-party reservation system.

Alternatively, if you'd prefer TourCMS to handle the integration work for you by adding your reservation system to our Sync tool, please contact us by emailing support@palisis.com for more information.

What should I do?

Types of availability webhooks

You can create two distinct types of webhooks in TourCMS:

• Channel default webhooks: By default, all tours will use the channel default webhook configured for the channel they are being booked on.
• Tour specific webhooks: These are particularly useful if you have certain products or tours sourced from different external systems. This allows TourCMS to query the correct system for availability information for that specific tour, overriding the channel default.

You also have the option to exclude a tour from availability webhooks entirely. In this scenario, TourCMS will provide availability answers based solely on its own cached data, without querying an external system.

How to create your webhooks

To set up a new availability webhook:

1. Navigate to Configuration > System & Setup > Check Availability Webhooks.
2. Click ‘Create new availability webhook’.

3. You'll then be prompted to choose whether you're creating a Channel default or a Tour specific webhook.

4. Provide a webhook name that makes it easy to remember (e.g., the name of the connected system or a supplier).
5. Enter the webhook URL. This is the URL of the external system that will respond to availability requests.

Configuring a channel default webhook

If you're setting up a channel default webhook:

1. First, create your webhook(s) by following the steps outlined in the "How to Create Your Webhooks" section above.
2. You'll be able to select the channel(s) this webhook will be the default for. Click on the 'Selected channels' option to choose one or more channels to use this webhook. Any channels that already have a default webhook assigned will be unavailable for selection.

3. Once you've made your selections, click 'OK' and then 'Save'.

After saving, you'll see a table providing the following details for your configured webhooks:

1. Webhook ID: A unique identifier (e.g., 4410628d-2d9e-41b3-af84-a879f2939a98). You can copy this ID directly by clicking the icon next to it; it's also returned in the check availability API response.
2. Webhook name: The name you assigned during creation.
3. Webhook URL: The URL of the connected external system.
4. Channels in use: This indicates how many channels are currently utilising this webhook.
5. Active status: Indicated by a green icon if the webhook is active.
6. Actions: Options to edit or delete the webhook. You can deactivate a webhook by editing it and unmarking the 'Active' setting.

Configuring a Tour specific webhook

You can create as many tour-specific webhooks as needed to accurately check availability across different external systems for your various tours.

To set up a Tour specific webhook:

1. First, create your webhook(s) by following the steps outlined in the "How to Create Your Webhooks" section above.
2. Once created, you'll see similar details in the webhook table as with channel default webhooks:

Assigning webhooks to individual tours

After creating your tour-specific webhooks, you can assign them to individual tours:

1. Navigate to the Setup for the specific tour you wish to configure.
2. Under the Operations / Suppliers tab, you'll find the following options for controlling availability checking:
   • Use channel default: This is the default setting for all tours. If a channel default availability webhook is configured, that webhook will be called.
   • Exclude from check availability webhooks: Select this option if you want TourCMS to answer availability calls based on its own internal cache, bypassing any external webhook calls.
   • Use a specific webhook for this tour: Choose this to select one of your "Tour specific webhooks". This will override any channel default webhooks configured for the channel.

By utilising these options, you gain precise control over how TourCMS checks and confirms the availability of your tours, ensuring accurate information directly from your various booking systems.