Skip to main content

Itinerary Action - Initiate Booking Change

Simon Gresswell
Updated

Important:

This feature is only available to clients that:

  • have a credit line agreement with the Marketplace Operator or
  • have their own supplier credentials integrated. 

Please contact your customer success manager or our support team to enable the feature flags available at:

  • Distribution Channel > Nezasa-Only > Cockpit >
    • Booking Changes in Cockpit
    • Booking Changes on Summary Screen

If your business flow also enables Agents to conduct booking changes, request to enable the feature flag available at:

  • Distribution Channel > Nezasa-Only > Checkout >
    • Allow agencies to perform post-booking actions

 

Overview

Post-booking changes are conducted via the Nezasa Cockpit in Customer Care and can only be applied to confirmed itineraries.

The following steps will give you an overview of how to change an existing booking. 

 

How to perform a booking change

Open the respective itinerary in the Cockpit under Customer Care to perform a booking change. For example, the itinerary below has a Confirmed by Supplier status. 

Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 14.17.59.jpeg

1. Click on Initiate Booking Change in the Action button.

2. After initiating the booking change, the itinerary status is set to Change Initiated.

3. The link Modify the itinerary on Planner is displayed in the Open Booking Change section.

4. A toggle next to Itinerary allows you to switch between the Original and Alternative views of the itinerary. To know more about the difference between the Original and Alternative views, go to the Technical Details section. 

Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 14.18.17.png

5. Click on the link to Modify the itinerary on Planner.

6. The itinerary opens in the Planner and adjustments/changes can be applied to:

  • Accommodation
  • Activities
  • Rental Car
  • Transfers
  • Base services
  • Upsell items
  • Inventory flights

Changes to the number of PAX aren't allowed.

Please note:

Remarks on changes applied to specific booked product types:

  • Live supply flights: Flight changes or cancellations cannot be conducted in TripBuilder once booked and tickets are issued. Booking changes to the itinerary or other components besides flights are possible if flight dates and times aren't impacted. 
  • Insurances: Once booked, these cannot be changed. Booking changes to the itinerary or other components are possible. When completing a booking change to an itinerary with a booked insurance, the warning message is presented to the user: "This itinerary contains insurance which will not be adjusted and/or rebooked, which could lead to insufficient or excess coverage. Are you sure you want to continue?" 

 

7. After the adjustments are performed in the Planner, follow the regular booking flow to the Checkout.

8. In the Checkout, proceed until you reach the Booking Change Summary step and click the button Continue in Cockpit to be redirected to the itinerary's page in Customer Care.
Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 14.20.50.png

 

9. Back in Customer Care, click the Complete Booking Change option under the Actions button.

Screenshot 2023-08-18 at 14.21.07.png

Please note: 

Click on Discard Booking Change to revert the changes and return to the original itinerary. 

 

10. The pop-up Complete Booking Changes is displayed with a list of price changes and the following options:

  • With Fee: add a processing fee (per PAX or in total) to the itinerary's total cost.
  • Without Fee: no extra fees are added to the total cost.
  • Keep original sales price: no extra fees or discounts can be added to the total cost.
  • Total Discount: value added as a discount to the total cost.

Screenshot 2023-08-22 at 15.20.37.png 

Know more:

Additional information on the Complete Booking Changes pop-up can be found in the article Manual Price Correction in Customer Care, particularly on the usage of the Total Discount field.

 

11. The itinerary status is set to Change Completed. If a discount is added during the booking change, it's displayed on the Overview page.

Screenshot 2023-08-22 at 15.21.26.png

After the booking change is completed, the data of the itinerary will be updated accordingly, including the travel documentation and Booking API.

Please note:

Upon confirmation, changes to booked accommodation, activities, rental cars, transfers, base services, upsell items and inventory flights will automatically trigger:

  1. cancellation of the original component, and
  2. booking of the component with the new changes. 

 

Know more:

For more information about post-booking changes, check out the article Post Booking Rescue Tools.

 

Change flow details

This section presents further details of the entities involved in booking changes. 

 

Itineraries and Checkouts

Two entities are involved in any booking: Itineraries and Checkouts.

Itineraries represent the trip's structure, components and PAX, while Checkout represents the booking process (or booking change or cancellation). On a business level, the identifier for the customer is the refId, which is generated when the itinerary is created (template instantiation). When the user clicks on Checkout (on the Planner), we create a checkout and re-use the refId from the itinerary.

This ensures a consistent experience for the user: there's one identifier referring to their booking.

Initially, the checkout contains reduced information: a link to the itinerary, a state (BookingInitiated, also see Itinerary Status for reference) and some company information. As soon as the user performs the booking, the components in the itinerary are updated, and the checkout is set to BookingCompleted (there are some intermediate technical states).

An important detail here is that the state of the checkout is propagated to the itinerary. Therefore, the itinerary is also in state BookingCompleted after a successful booking.

 

Alternative Itinerary

Starting from a completed booking, a user can initiate a booking change. In the background, this creates a clone of the checkout and the itinerary. The new checkout will now be in state BookingChangeInitiated, and the attribute currentAlternative points to the cloned itinerary. The cloned itinerary is in the state Alternative.

What happened to the refIds?

Let's look at the checkouts first: we now have two checkouts.

One is in the state BookingCompleted, and the other is in the state BookingChangeInitiated. Both of them share the same refId because, for the customer, it's still one booking. The itineraries, on the other hand, don't share refIds. Instead, the original (the one currently in state BookingCompleted) still has the same refId as the checkouts while the cloned alternative has a newly generated refId.

 

The Alternative Becomes the Primary Itinerary

With this cloned itinerary, the user can open the Planner again and make some modifications. Once all changes are done, the user can click on Back to Cockpit. When completing the booking change, the following actions take place in the background:

  • TripBuilder checks the difference between the original and the cloned itinerary

    • the new components are booked

    • the old components are cancelled

  • The cloned itinerary replaces the original on the checkout

    • set the itineraryId to the cloned one

    • the currentAlternative attribute is set to None

    • the cloned itinerary changes its refId to the original one

    • the original itinerary gets a new refId

  • The checkout state is set to BookingChangeCompleted

    • the cloned itinerary is set to BookingChangeCompleted

    • the original itinerary is set to status Superseded

So, after all these changes, the new checkout points to the new primary itinerary by _id with the attribute itineraryId. 

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Article is closed for comments.