Oracle Hospitality Distribution APIs

The OPERA Cloud Distribution APIs enable authorized channel partners to access property availability and pricing to create and update reservations for any active property that has enabled the specific channel in Oracle Hospitality Distribution, whether that property is using OPERA Cloud Foundation or OPERA Cloud Central.

OPERA Cloud Distribution can also serve property management systems like OPERA 5 (legacy) or other third-party property management systems as long as they are subscribed and provisioned in OPERA Cloud Central and integration exists between their system and OPERA Cloud Central.

Note:

A single channel cannot use Shop/Book and receive ARI Push at the same time; it must operate in one mode or the other.

Channels using Shop and Book in OPERA Cloud

Main channel types: Booking engines and Global Distribution System (GDS) flows that retrieve availability and create booking directly in OPERA Cloud.

Shop APIs: Optimize price-and-availability discovery.
  • Multi-property search: Query availability across multiple properties to quickly identify hotel matching dates, location, and basic criteria; returns high-level open/closed status and indicative rate ranges to power fast and light-weight search results.
  • Single-property availability (Offers): Returns the property's available offers (room type + rate plan) with detailed availability, room and rate content, prices, policies, taxes, and package breakdowns to support selection on the booking path.
  • Calendar availability: Provides day-by-day availability and price ranges for a single property over a defined period (for example, 30 days calendar for arrival for 3 nights length of stays). This is ideal for rate calendars that help guests choose which date to explore further.
  • Additional notes: Requests can include common qualifiers (for example, occupants, view types, room types, child ages, LOS, promotion codes, negotiated access codes, block codes, rate plan type) and return responses aligned to channel use (currency, language, market) that are designed for performance and global consistency with OPERA Cloud business rules.
Book API: Simple booking interface for channels to create, modify, and cancel reservations directly in OPERA Cloud using industry-standard codes and distribution logic.
  • OPERA Cloud remains the system of record. Rates, policies, inventory, and restrictions are enforced as defined by the hotel.
  • Best for controlled access to predefined rates and inventory where channels must not override OPERA Cloud driven rules.
  • Supports reservation essentials such as guest details, stay elements, payment/guarantee references; responses include confirmations suitable for guest display.

Channels using ARI Push from OPERA Cloud and Reservation Notification to OPERA Cloud

Main channel types: Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and channel managers caching rates and availability in their systems with reservations created and committed to guests in their platform or upstream systems.

Availability, Rates, and Inventory (ARI) Publication (webhook-style outbound messages from OPERA Cloud): Used when a channel receives near real-time updates from OPERA Cloud.
  • Lifecycle events: Onboarding notifications when a property enables a channel; mapping notifications when hotels, room types, rate plans, or room-rate mappings are created or updated.
  • Operational updates: Publishes calculated rate amounts, room-type inventory by day, and restrictions as changes occur, enabling the channel to stay synchronized without polling.
  • Delivery considerations: Designed for reliability with retry semantics and circuit breakers. Channels should validate signatures/headers, apply updates atomically, and honor effective dates/time zones based on property timezone.
  • In case of errors during the processing of the message, the partner will return appropriate HTTP response codes as defined in the Oracle specifications along with synchronous meaningful error title.
  • Outbound calls to partners can originate from OHIP or other OPERA Cloud components.
Reservation Notification (inbound to OPERA Cloud from push channels): For OTAs or channel managers sending guest-confirmed bookings.
  • Rates and totals provided by the channel are accepted as-is; OPERA Cloud inventory and restriction checks are bypassed because the booking is already committed upstream.
  • Uses industry-standard codes and supports defaults when explicit mappings are not provided, enabling seamless intake of externally owned reservations.
  • Typical operations cover new, modify, and cancel flows; responses include confirmations suitable for guest display.

Parent topic: Using the Oracle Hospitality APIs