In this section of Zak, you can monitor the outcome of all Channel Manager updates to OTAs: i.e., the sending to the connected portals of the XML code that contains information about prices, restrictions, and availability of your rooms for a specified period.
If one of the values listed above changes on Zak (e.g., due to a manual modification or a reservation entry), the system will send an update request to the connected OTA. You can monitor your updates in the "In progress" column.
Updates have different execution times (from a few seconds to a few minutes) depending on their size, server traffic, and OTA portal. In the "Recents" column, you will find a list of all the latest successful updates.
However, it may happen that some updates, for various reasons, fail. In case an update fails (e.g., because it receives an error in response or because the execution is slowed down), the system automatically retries it 8 times. You will find it under the column "In progress," with the error message and the number of execution attempts.
If the update fails after 8 attempts, it is permanently suspended and goes under the column "Problems." Here you can also open the error message box, and you will have two buttons available: one to relaunch the update and one to delete the failed update log.
You can re-launch an update after removing the error cause and if no subsequent updates have been launched.
You can delete the log if the error occurred on a prior date, and other updates on the same day have already been successful.
Below we list the main causes of error:
- Massive server traffic: Our systems are designed to minimize any slowdowns, but it's not up to us!
- A technical outage of the portal servers: usually these problems are also officially reported by interested partner portals
- Hotel ID, room code, rate code not recognized: this happens when the connection with the Channel Manager has been deactivated on the portal's extranet, or rooms or rates have been deleted without updating the connection on the Channel Manager side. In this case, the Channel sends updates for rooms or rates that no longer exist, which generates an error
- Price limits not respected: With some portals (such as Expedia or Airbnb), you may have set minimum/maximum price limits for some rooms/rates/periods. If you send prices that do not comply with these limits, the portal refuses to update them in full, and the other values are also not updated.
Zak sends an email notification in case the updates are permanently suspended (i.e., after 8 retries) when the cause of the suspension needs an intervention by the user. In particular, our support team will contact you by email or by phone if the OTA price limits are not respected, because fixing this error may often require support.
In any case, do not hesitate to contact us for any doubt or for support in solving update errors: these are, in fact, serious problems that compromise the functioning of the Channel Manager and can cause overbooking.