Have you been to a hotel recently? I have!

The COVID-19 pandemic has truly forced the hand of hospitality businesses to do things differently! I was recently in London for a couple of nights.. staying in the same hotel I would typically stay when in the big smoke – yet, it was SO different.

I think that lately, we have become so accustomed to face coverings and protection screens that actually we don’t really appreciate what is happening behind the scenes within a business to keep employees and their customers safe. My entire stay was managed by my mobile phone… Here is a few things that happened (or should I say.. didn’t happen) during the stay which was absolutely not the case pre-pandemic:

• I did not go to the check-in desk….instead I opened an app on my phone and hit the check-in/check-out button
• I did not obtain a physical key card….instead I had a digital key in my phone wallet (..and a free drink at the bar for using the feature!!)
• I did not use a physical room service (or restaurant) menu….instead there were QR codes
• I did not pick up the hotel room phone to order room service….all completed via the QR code link – it even had tracking updates
• I did not turn up to breakfast whenever I felt like it…. instead I booked a timeslot in the app

There were a few things I didn’t do during my 2 nights in the hotel also but I know there were changes associated, such as booking time slots in the gym and pool.

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But anyway.. this post is not about my trip to London.

Integration between hospitality applications is notoriously complex. Think about how your demands can change as a customer of a hotel..

1. I’ll book for the 14th July
2. Actually no, I’ve changed my mind, let’s go on the 21st July
3. My flight got delayed, so I’m now arriving in the early hours of the next morning
4. There is something wrong with the room, I need to change to a new room
5. Can you split my bill and put some on the room and I’ll pay some here
6. My plans changed and we’re leaving early .. can I check out please

Just some of the scenarios of the top of my head….now imagine having to adopt a COMPLETELY new approach, overnight, thanks to a global pandemic!

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I’ve recently been working with Oracle OPERA Cloud. This is Oracle’s Hospitality Property Management (PMS) offering. More specifically, I have been focusing on Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP) which provides a rich set of 3000+ endpoints for integration into and out of OPERA Cloud… it truly does an awesome job at simplifying integration. (more to come on the benefits and use cases of OHIP.. stay tuned)

Introducing a new UI experience

Oracle have now completed a full overhaul facelift to their OHIP User Interface in their first OHIP release of the year (v22.1). This release is not about new endpoints, but rather about how to find them. Revolutionizing the search experience… because, lets face it… what’s the point in an API if you don’t know it exists or how to use it?

With a complete transformation of the user experience and search capability, amongst significant shift in UI design to make it easier to identify what you are looking for, it is now possible to:

• Search for APIs at operation level

• Search for APIs based on version

• Search for APIs based on category (more categories are coming soon.. such as “payments”)

• Search for APIs based on modules

• Search for APIs based on HTTP Method

• New graphical elements

Postman

Since it’s release, the OHIP team have well-maintained a comprehensive postman collection. Not even just limited to the available endpoints organized by module… but even further than that by creating folders of popular workflows.

Now, it is also possible to get all of this in just one-place, directly within the OHIP Developer Portal with deep links out to the respective workflow postman collection. E.g: https://www.postman.com/hospitalityapis/workspace/oracle-hospitality-apis/folder/9251981-07717c53-8b3c-40c9-a0bc-bf3826f40c8a?ctx=documentation

Summary

The OHIP team are really doing some interesting work behind the scenes. I’m aware of a number big upcoming features. Truly changing the game around hospitality integration. Excited to see what is next!!

For those that do want to see more on OHIP, I have a few posts planned to go into a little more detail on the capabilities and use cases – please stay tuned, and thanks for reading!!