Skip Navigation

Car Rentals

Digital Connect offers airlines the ability to book car rentals for passengers. With this feature, airlines can search for rental cars that are available at the passenger's destination, display the available cars to the passenger, and if the passenger decides, book a car rental.

The actual rental car information is sourced from a rental car provider, via industry-standard (OTA_VehXXXX) web service requests and responses, and displayed. If the passenger decides to book a car, this is conveyed to the car provider through OTA_VehResRQ web service requests and responses. It is to be noted that this is routed through the centralized Service Engine.

  • When the Airline is not Merchant of Record (MOR), Digital Connect does not attempt to authorize the car rental charge at booking time, because the passenger will be paying the rental car company directly when picking up or returning car.
  • Digital Connect deals with passing of the payment information to the downline system including the card details in case of credit card payment.

Integration with cars for car offers will be available in the following flows:

  • The Revenue Booking Flow (B2C);
  • The Redemption Booking Flow (RBE);
  • The Manage Your Booking - Book Now Pay Later Flow (MYB: BNPL).

Limitations

  • The car rental feature is limited to one business model – when the airline is not Merchant of Record – with this model the airline merely communicates the passenger's reservation request to the car provider and the passenger is responsible for paying the car provider directly, typically when the car is returned at the end of the rental period.
  • The Booking - Book Now Pay Later Flow (B2C: BNPL) - Cars cannot be put on hold.
  • The Manage Your Booking - Modify Trip Options Flow (MYB: MTO) - Car Rental cannot be added as part of the MYB: MTO Flow.
  • The Manage Your Booking - Change Itinerary Flow (MYB: CI) - Cars already reserved cannot be changed - Digital Connect will send an appropriate message that can be displayed via airline’s UI.
  • The Manage Your Booking - Cancel and Refund Flow (MYB: CR) - Cars cannot be cancelled. Digital Connect will send an appropriate message if the car is already reserved (it can be displayed via airline’s UI).

Highlights

This feature employs stateless services which are in sync with the Services provided by the Service Engine:

  • Rental location search – POST /products/car/location;
  • Car availability search – POST /products/car/search;
  • Book car – POST /products/car/book.

Since all above services are stateless Digital Connect also adds auxiliary services to add/remove the car price (as an external product) to the shopping basket:

  • Add to cart – POST /products/external;
  • Remove from cart – DELETE /products/external.

Airlines can provide an option to search for a car and rent a car with the following sequence of Digital Connect calls (sample flow with stateless services included):

  1. The airline obtains search criteria from the passenger and submits a /products/air/search request, POST operation to get a list of flights matching the search criteria. Display the returned flights to the passenger.
  2. After the passenger selects one or more flights, the airline submits the /products/air POST operation to add the flights to the itinerary and store the itinerary in the session.
  3. The airline prompts passenger(s) for the passenger’s details. The airline calls /passengers POST to add passenger(s) to the itinerary.
  4. The airline calls /products/car/location POST to perform a search of car rental locations with the search criteria. The response contains a list of available car rental locations. The airline can format the information for display to the passenger.
  5. The passenger selects location. The airline calls /products/cars/search POST to perform a search of car availability based on the given location. The response contains a list of cars with availability status. The airline can format the information for display to the passenger.
  6. The airline can call /products/external POST operation to obtain a current list, with prices of external products that the passenger has added to the itinerary and use this information to build and display a shopping cart.
    POST /products/external is for pure display purpose (it is a simple way to help UI to display proper shopping cart).It is not meant to handle any payments. Those “products” are in no way handled by Digital Connect.
  7. When the passenger indicates that shopping is complete the airline obtains available payment options for the current itinerary by calling /paymentOptions GET. The airline can format the information for display to the passenger.
  8. When the passenger selects form of payment, completes the payment and decides to purchase, the airline initiates the purchase and ticketing process by calling /purchase POST. If the authorization is successful, the /purchase service will create a PNR, EMD(s), etc.
  9. The response indicates whether the purchase is successful. The airline formats this information for display to the passenger.
  10. The airline calls /products/car/book POST to perform the car booking for the available offer. In book car service the airline has to pass one chosen car offer and air booking PNR. The response contains the confirmation message and the details for the booked car. After successful booking the car information will be added to PNR.
  11. The passenger specifies a PNR for review.
  12. The airlines submits a /pnr GET request. Response will reflect information regarding booked car (new CarReservationSummary class added to the PNR). The airline can format the information for display to the passenger.

Car Search Enhancements

Digital Connect introduces number of enhancement to car search and book functionalities:

Location Service Changes

Digital Connect corrects the behavior in which during car search when origin and destination are provided by the passenger offers for the entire country are returned. New enhancement offers two types of search:

  • Itinerary based in which ItineraryOrigin and DestinationReferenceCode should be provided;
  • Country and city based in which CountryCode, Currency and City should be provided.

Based on above search types Digital Connect returns data for requested location or for requested itinerary.

‘Per day price’ in Response

Digital Connect adds per day price field in /products/car/book Service which allows airlines UI to display daily rental charges that include also additional mandatory charges to the passengers.

Specific Error Code for No Locations Found

Digital Connect improves error handling by adding specific error code for no locations found in /products/car/location Service. It is returned when /products/car/location Service doesn't find any location for provided request.

Error Handling

New 500 type error was added:

{
    "status": "Complete",
    "type": "BusinessLogic",
    "errorCode": "ERR.SSW.APP.NO_LOCATIONS_FOUND",
    "timeStamp": "2017-08-31T08:56:07",
    "message": "1-Search returned no records:BUSINESS_ERROR"
}