Booking.com's Reopening and Performance Deal Sign-Ups Close 1 October

Booking.com's connectivity roadmap is written for software providers, not for hoteliers, which is why the deadlines on it tend to reach operators late or not at all. Three of them fall inside the next eight weeks.

Sign-ups close 1 October

Two commercial campaign programmes stop accepting registrations on 1 October 2026.

Reopening Deals 2026 targets properties sitting in Auto-Closed Availability status, meaning Booking.com has closed them to bookings because availability ran out and was never refreshed. Booking.com is offering a marketing kit to bring those listings back online. Partners sign up by 1 October, pull their ACAV property list, run the campaign, and then upload campaign proofs and deeplinks by 31 October 2026. Miss the proof deadline and the sign-up was wasted.

Performance Deals runs four separate campaign tracks with staggered dates. Availability and Zero Bookings both close registration on 1 October, with campaign periods running to 10 October and 10 November respectively. The Promotions track also closes 1 October. The Content track, aimed at properties with thin descriptions, images or amenity data, registers until 1 November.

If you work through a channel manager or connectivity provider, the sign-up usually happens on their side. That is the question worth asking this month rather than in November.

Two legacy APIs retire in Q4

The House Rules API, the old XML endpoint that let home providers set house rules, key collection and some damage deposit information, is being replaced by JSON fields in the Property Settings API. Booking.com is telling providers to stop new development on it and migrate.

The Content API HDCN, the single XML endpoint that historically covered property details, settings, facilities, policies, charges and contacts, is deprecated and heading for full sunset. Providers are being moved onto smaller modular APIs covering facilities, settings, charges, contacts, rooms and policies separately. Booking.com also plans to remove the Rule ID, Rule Name and Variant Name fields from the Licences API response.

Neither migration is something an operator performs. Both are things an operator feels if their provider leaves it late. Content that stops syncing during a botched migration shows up as an incomplete listing, and incomplete listings rank worse.

Security changes with a 90-day clock

Booking.com plans to make token-based authentication mandatory for users of its Connectivity Notification Service in Q3 and Q4, with auth endpoints and client secrets rotating in the Provider Portal every 90 days. Recurring credential rotation is the kind of thing that breaks integrations quietly at 3am.

Separately, the Reservations API will stop including guest phone numbers for reservations tied to what Booking.com calls untrusted hotel IDs, meaning newly onboarded properties whose status is still undecided. New properties should expect less guest contact data in the feed than established ones.

Already live

Two items on the roadmap have already taken effect and are worth checking against your own numbers. Since 15 June 2026, Payments by Booking.com collects per-person fees such as city tax and tourism fees, and includes them in property payouts. Properties remain responsible for remitting those fees to local authorities. And the legacy Max Paid Child Rate field, which sets how many children get child pricing and affects visibility in family searches, was scheduled for removal across all platforms by June 2026.

Booking.com describes the roadmap as tentative and says timing can change at its discretion. The dated campaign deadlines are the parts that behave like commitments.