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Guest Tickets Express: Reseller Connection

Connect Guest Tickets Express to Ventrata to sync availability and prices and receive bookings instantly. In-person sales through hotel concierge desks.

Guest Tickets Express logo powered by Anchor icon Anchor

 

Guest Tickets Express is Davler Media's concierge sales platform, letting hotel concierge desks sell Broadway shows, attraction admissions, museum entry and passes to guests in person. Davler Media has published New York and Chicago visitor media since 2004 through City Guide and Everything To Do. For operators, it brings in-destination hotel guests in New York and Chicago who buy at the start of their visit on a concierge's recommendation, a same-day buying moment and a high-spend segment. Guest Tickets Express uses Anchor as their primary ticketing system.

 

Connecting Guest Tickets Express to Ventrata syncs your availability and prices and delivers bookings, changes and cancellations with tickets issued automatically. Guest Tickets Express runs on Anchor, and receives your products through its certified integration with Ventrata's OCTO API.

 

To learn more about partnering with Guest Tickets Express, visit davlermedia.com/guest-tickets-express.

 

Primary website

Tags

Offline & Retail Channel · Event & Festival Ticketing

Destination markets

🌎 Global

Source markets

🌎 Global

Specialties

In-person sales through hotel concierge desks

Connection features

Availability Sync · Pricing Sync · Bookings Sync

Developed by

Anchor (using Ventrata's OCTO API)

 

This reseller connection lets you sell your products through Guest Tickets Express without managing availability, pricing and bookings by hand. Features of this connection include:

  • Availability Sync – Guest Tickets Express checks your live availability in Ventrata.

  • Pricing Sync – Guest Tickets Express gets your prices from your reseller pricing in Ventrata.

  • Bookings Sync – bookings, updates and cancellations from Guest Tickets Express are created in Ventrata instantly, and customers get Ventrata tickets.

 

Creating the Guest Tickets Express Connection

🔐 Required Role Permissions: See Connections, Modify Connections, See Connection Key

Before you begin:

  • You must have a commercial agreement with Guest Tickets Express for them to sell your products. To inquire about partnering with them, contact them via davlermedia.com/guest-tickets-express.

  • You must have Guest Tickets Express created as a Reseller in Ventrata with their pricing (retail, wholesale/commission) defined correctly. Note that this API connection requires that the reseller is set to the "Bill to my account" settlement method.

 

  1. In Ventrata Dashboard, go to Connections → Connections, click + New Connection, and select Guest Tickets Express (powered by Anchor) from the list of partners.

  2. Select Guest Tickets Express Reseller from the list of your resellers (must be created before creating a connection). The connection will inherit the reseller's configuration like pricing, allowed destinations, products, etc.

  3. (Optional) You can also set the connection Name of your choosing, which may be helpful if you plan to have multiple Guest Tickets Express connections and would like to differentiate between them more easily in the future.

  4. Press the Create Octo Connection button.

 

📗 TIP

If needed, you can also allow or disallow products or destinations on the connection level, in addition to what you have configured on the reseller.

 

Mapping Products to Guest Tickets Express

Securely share the OCTO API key shown on the connection you've created with your Guest Tickets Express contact and ask them to map your products using Ventrata's OCTO API, with pricing (octo/pricing) enabled. Typically, it takes no longer than a few business days for the Guest Tickets Express team to complete this.

 

Your Ventrata configuration is complete. You do not need to take any further steps.

 

📗 TIP

Guest Tickets Express can access all products enabled on the connection, but you can also provide the Product and Option IDs from the connection page when contacting them to specify what to map.

 

 

Managing the Guest Tickets Express Connection

  • Allow or disallow products: limit which destinations, products and options Guest Tickets Express can access. See how to allow or disallow products.

  • Rename the connection to tell several Guest Tickets Express connections apart.

 

Connection Features Detailed

This section is for anyone who wants to know exactly how the Guest Tickets Express connection works: which Ventrata OCTO API calls Guest Tickets Express makes (through Anchor's certified integration), when it makes them, and what that means for you. Each call links to Ventrata's API documentation.

 

In short: Guest Tickets Express pulls everything it needs from Ventrata. It reads your products, checks your availability and prices, and sends bookings and cancellations. Ventrata doesn't push changes to Guest Tickets Express, so anything you change in Ventrata reaches Guest Tickets Express the next time it checks.

 

Timings are typical for Guest Tickets Express and rounded, and they can change if Guest Tickets Express changes how it syncs.

 

Product Mapping

❌

You can't map products from Ventrata. Guest Tickets Express maps them on its side, through your account manager or Guest Tickets Express's portal.

This works as follows:

  • Get Products (GET /products) – when Guest Tickets Express sets up your connection, and whenever it refreshes its listings, it reads every product enabled on the connection, with its options and units (ticket types such as Adult or Child).

  • Get Product (GET /products/{productId}) – Guest Tickets Express re-reads a single product to pick up changes to its options, units, booking cutoffs and settings.

  • Mapping on Guest Tickets Express's side – Guest Tickets Express links each Ventrata option and unit to its own listing and ticket types. Your Guest Tickets Express account manager does this for you, or you do it in Guest Tickets Express's own portal if Guest Tickets Express offers one. You only share the connection's API key.

 

Typically with Guest Tickets Express:

  • Guest Tickets Express reads your full product list about every 7 hours.

 

What this means for you: Guest Tickets Express can only sell what it has mapped. When you add a product, option or unit in Ventrata, Guest Tickets Express may see it on its next refresh, but it won't sell it until it's mapped. So tell your Guest Tickets Express account manager whenever you add one.

Content Sync

❌

Guest Tickets Express doesn't read your product content from Ventrata.

Guest Tickets Express uses the descriptions, images and other content set up on its own side, so update your content with Guest Tickets Express directly.

Availability Sync

✅

Guest Tickets Express checks your live availability in Ventrata. Ventrata doesn't push availability changes to Guest Tickets Express.

This works as follows:

  • Availability Check (POST /availability) – Guest Tickets Express sends a product, an option and a date or date range. Ventrata answers with each bookable day or time slot, its status (AVAILABLE, LIMITED, SOLD_OUT, CLOSED or FREESALE), the remaining vacancies, the booking cutoff and an availabilityId, which Guest Tickets Express needs to book that slot.

  • Check at booking – when a customer books, Ventrata checks capacity again before it creates the booking, so Guest Tickets Express can't overbook a slot that has just sold out, even if its stored availability is slightly out of date.

 

Typically with Guest Tickets Express:

  • Availability Check: Guest Tickets Express checks each product about every 3 hours, usually starting about 3 months ahead and covering a single day per request and looks up to about 5 months ahead.

  • Checks are busiest between 17:00 and 23:00 UTC, which suggests most checks are live, as customers browse Guest Tickets Express.

 

What this means for you: when you close a date, change capacity or sell out in Ventrata, Guest Tickets Express shows it after its next check. For dates it checks regularly, that's within about 3 hours. Dates further ahead are usually checked less often.

Pricing Sync

✅

Your prices come back with every availability check, once Guest Tickets Express asks for them with the octo/pricing capability.

This works as follows:

  • octo/pricing capability – Guest Tickets Express asks for prices by adding octo/pricing to the Octo-Capabilities header of its requests. Without it, Ventrata sends availability with no prices at all.

  • Availability Check (POST /availability) – with pricing on, each day or time slot comes back with your price per unit (ticket type): the retail price the customer pays and the net price you invoice Guest Tickets Express, both from the reseller's pricing in Ventrata (retail and wholesale/commission).

  • Group prices – when Guest Tickets Express also sends how many people of each unit type are booking, Ventrata prices that exact group. This matters for Booking Size fares and other group pricing.

  • Booking Reservation (POST /bookings) and Booking Confirmation (POST /bookings/{uuid}/confirm) – the booking comes back with its final retail and net price, so the booking in Ventrata always records the price it was sold at.

 

Typically with Guest Tickets Express:

  • Guest Tickets Express requests octo/pricing on all of its availability checks, so it sells at your Ventrata prices.

  • Guest Tickets Express doesn't send the number of people per unit type, so prices come back per person, and group pricing such as Booking Size fares may not show correctly on Guest Tickets Express.

 

‼️ IMPORTANT – Ask for pricing to be enabled. When you ask Guest Tickets Express to map your products, ask them to enable pricing (octo/pricing) as well, or switch it on yourself if you map in Guest Tickets Express's portal. Otherwise it may be off, and Guest Tickets Express won't receive your Ventrata prices.

📗 TIP – If prices on Guest Tickets Express look wrong, check the Guest Tickets Express reseller's pricing in Ventrata first: that's what Guest Tickets Express reads.

Promotions Sync

❌

Your Ventrata promotions don't apply on Guest Tickets Express.

Prices on Guest Tickets Express don't include promotions you create in Ventrata. Set up any promotions with Guest Tickets Express directly.

Bookings Sync

✅

Bookings and cancellations made on Guest Tickets Express are created in Ventrata instantly, and customers get Ventrata tickets.

This works as follows:

  1. Hold: Booking Reservation (POST /bookings) – when a customer starts checkout on Guest Tickets Express, Guest Tickets Express sends the product, option, chosen slot (availabilityId) and one unit item per person. Ventrata checks capacity again and creates an ON_HOLD booking, which holds the places while the customer pays. If there's no longer room, Ventrata rejects the hold.

  2. Confirm: Booking Confirmation (POST /bookings/{uuid}/confirm) – once payment goes through, Guest Tickets Express confirms the hold, with its own booking reference and the customer's contact details. The booking becomes CONFIRMED in Ventrata, and Ventrata sends back your booking reference and the tickets (one per person) or a voucher (one per booking), depending on how your product is set up, each with a QR code and a PDF link. Guest Tickets Express gives these to the customer, who shows them at your entrance like any Ventrata ticket.

  3. Expire: if the customer doesn't finish paying, Guest Tickets Express never confirms, and the hold expires on its own and frees the places.

  4. Cancel: Booking Cancellation (POST /bookings/{uuid}/cancel) – when a customer cancels on Guest Tickets Express, Guest Tickets Express cancels the booking in Ventrata. Ventrata accepts this only if the booking can still be cancelled and the option's cancellation cutoff hasn't passed. Otherwise it rejects the request, and Guest Tickets Express has to contact you.

  5. Change: Guest Tickets Express doesn't use Booking Update (PATCH /bookings/{uuid}), so a change most likely reaches Ventrata as a cancellation plus a new booking.

 

Typically with Guest Tickets Express:

  • Guest Tickets Express doesn't set a hold time, so the default hold time applies.

  • A typical Guest Tickets Express booking is for about 2 people.

 

‼️ IMPORTANT – Bookings sync one way, from Guest Tickets Express to Ventrata. If you cancel, change or rebook a booking from Guest Tickets Express in Ventrata, for example in the Dashboard, Guest Tickets Express isn't notified. Contact Guest Tickets Express so the booking is cancelled or changed on their side too, or ask the customer to cancel through Guest Tickets Express.

Pickups/Dropoff Sync

❌

Guest Tickets Express doesn't send pickup or drop-off details with its bookings.

If your products include pickups, check with Guest Tickets Express how it collects pickup details, or arrange them with the customer.

Custom Questions Sync

❌

Guest Tickets Express doesn't send answers to your booking questions.

If you rely on booking questions, for example names or dietary needs, check with Guest Tickets Express how it collects that information.

Extras Sync

❌

Extras and add-ons can't be booked through Guest Tickets Express.

Customers can only book your main products and options on Guest Tickets Express. Sell extras separately, for example on arrival.

Redemption Sync

❌

Redemptions aren't reported to Guest Tickets Express.

Ventrata doesn't notify Guest Tickets Express when a ticket is scanned or redeemed. Guest Tickets Express only sees a redemption if it reads the booking back from Ventrata.

Pass Walkup Scanning Sync

❌

Guest Tickets Express pass holders can't be scanned at your entrance without a booking.

Customers from Guest Tickets Express need a booking made through Guest Tickets Express before they visit.

Gift Card Sync

❌

Ventrata gift cards can't be sold or redeemed through Guest Tickets Express.

Gift cards bought in Ventrata can't be used on Guest Tickets Express, and Guest Tickets Express can't sell Ventrata gift cards.

✅ supported · ❌ not supported

 

Good to know: limits and details of the Guest Tickets Express connection

  • Delays: availability and prices reach Guest Tickets Express only when it checks, so there's always a short delay after you change something in Ventrata.

  • Cancellation cutoff: Guest Tickets Express can cancel over the API only before your option's cancellation cutoff. Later cancellations have to be agreed with you.

  • What Guest Tickets Express can see: only the destinations, products and options allowed on the reseller and the connection, and enabled for sale on the Direct API source. See how to allow or disallow products.

  • Tickets: Guest Tickets Express issues the Ventrata tickets or voucher it gets on confirmation, so your usual scanning and redemption work as normal.

  • Test bookings: Guest Tickets Express can send test bookings while it sets up the connection. Test bookings don't use your availability and aren't invoiced.

 

FAQs

No products are displayed on the connection page.

Verify which destinations, products, and options are allowed on your reseller and connection. Next, confirm that your products and options are enabled for sale on the Direct API source. If the issue persists, contact our Technical Support.

My Ventrata products use Booking Size fares, and pricing isn't working correctly on Guest Tickets Express.

After every fare change, update the product mapping to ensure the partner tier counts are synced with Ventrata. Ensure the fare is enabled for sale over Direct API.

 

 

Partner Information

Davler Media Group LLC

202 W 40th St, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10018

United States

 

Ventrata Partner ID: 0cf3c691-c0bf-4cc8-a275-c745ef672d8c

 

Anchor

 

Ventrata Partner ID: 0e889f0f-dca4-4e9f-ba31-07ae9ae2f9d7

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