Overview
This guide covers the full lifecycle an integration needs to support: creating a group, creating blocks against it, moving a block through its statuses, and picking up individual reservations as attendees confirm.
Key Concepts
Group
It is a top-level object that acts as a container for managing MICE event flow. It captures administrative metadata such as the group/event name, the organiser (booker), comments and an optional payment account for billing the group’s stay. A Group holds no inventory on its own, it is a container for one or more Blocks.
Block
The object that actually holds rooms: a fixed number of units of one room category (or a day-use unit group, for meeting and function space) over a date range, at a negotiated rate. A group typically has several blocks, for example one per room category or one per rate plan, and every block links back to exactly one group. Reservations are picked up from a block one at a time or in bulk as attendees confirm.
Block Statuses
| Status | What it means | Reduces public availability? |
|---|---|---|
| Tentative | Default on creation. A soft hold for planning purposes. | No |
| Definite | Confirmed. Inventory is taken out of public availability. | Yes |
| Canceled | Returns the inventory back to the public availability. | No |
Inventory reduction only happens on confirmation. This matters for your integration: don’t assume a block reserves rooms the moment it is created, check its status.
Block Actions
Beyond moving between statuses, a block supports a handful of actions your integration should know about:
- Confirm sets the status of the block to Definite and takes out the inventory of the public availability.
- Release reverts a Definite block to Tentative and puts the units back into public availability. Only possible if nothing has been picked up yet.
- Pickup creates a reservation against the block, consuming one blocked unit.
- Wash releases unpicked units without changing the block’s status, useful when picked reservations shorten and you want to free up inventory.
- Cancel sets the block to Canceled and returns inventory to public availability. Only possible if nothing has been picked up, or every reservation picked up from it is also cancelled.
- Delete removes the block entirely. Only possible if no reservation was ever picked up from it.