Interfacing to BookingCenter - Direct or Through UHLL?

We provide 2 methods of interfacing to Guest Services devices such as phone systems, POS systems, call accounting, etc - directly or via the COMTROL Corp's UHLL method called 'LodgingLink.


1) Via COMTROL - a unique interfacing solution for the hospitality industry. With COMTROL, we support over 700 of Guest Service products . As a vendor of a Guest Service devices, consider working with COMTROL (http://www.comtrol.com/pub/en/Lodging-Link-Solutions) and getting your product certified agains the UHLL spec, thus Property Management Systems, such as BookingCenter's, would be able to interface. A good list at: http://www.comtrol.com/pub/en/Property-Management-Systems-Partners shows PMS partners.

All the technical details to do this are found at this URL: http://www.comtrol.com/pub/en/Lodging-Link-Solutions. While it may cost no money to certify against COMTROl, it is negligible. As a vendor of a Guest Service devices, consider the 'business model' of COMTROL.  Also, if your Guest Services device wishes to post Charges to a Folio, then consider that the COMTROL interface posts all charges from a POS system (such as Micros or Aloha) as a single line mapped to an inventory Item created in BookingCenter.  Thus, the folio can reference the ticket from the POS system, but the detail of the Charges will remain in the POS system.  


2) A bit more functionality than COMTROL supports, and cheaper for the end customer, is via the MICROS 3700/4700 standard that many POS systems use to communicate with Property Management Systems. We use TCP/IP method for implementing this with our 'cloud' service and if a Guest Service device supports this, it might work for both BookingCenter and other systems that support that interface . Your system would need to designate a TCP/IP port and hotel identifier for each installation. If you support this 'quasi standard' for Property Management System interfacing, then BookingCenter might be able to work directly with a Guest Service system and avoid the UHLL middle layer.  This approach allows for more 'granular' posting detail on the Folio, such as posting FOOD, BEVERAGE, TIP, TAX ect details on the folio. See this article to see if your POS system can connect via this TCPIP approach: https://support.bookingcenter.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/451