Guest messaging and upsells for Direct Software
TravelPal connects to Direct with the API key and organization ID Direct's team issues, then answers guests and sells upgrades inside the conversation on their booking. It reads your portfolio unit by unit, every reservation with its booking code and its three status flags, each quote line at its exact cent amount, and each unit's availability. Direct runs a public staging host, so the connection is proved there before it touches your live account.
One connection, running both ways. Every item on it is detailed below.
What TravelPal reads from Direct
Direct, from Vacation Rental Partners, is run by US vacation rental property management companies whose portfolios include buildings and resorts where one address holds many bookable units.
Units become properties, buildings do not
In Direct the property is the building or the resort and the unit is the thing a guest books, so an eight-unit property arrives as eight properties in TravelPal, each with its own name, description, occupancy, bedrooms and bathrooms. The building's shared features carry onto every unit alongside the unit's own, and the address and the photos come across with them. A reservation names the property and the unit together, which is what keeps a stay on the right door where twelve of them share a street address.
Reservations, with the code the guest actually quotes
Direct announces reservations created and reservations updated, and a cancellation arrives as an update rather than an announcement of its own, so TravelPal reads the flags on every change instead of waiting for a cancel notice. Each record carries the stay dates, the party size, the planned arrival and departure times, the channel the booking came from, and the booking code the guest quotes, which is not the same thing as Direct's own record number. Status is three separate flags, canceled, confirmed and archived. A canceled booking keeps its confirmed flag, so canceled is read first and a canceled stay never gets a live guest page.
Availability per unit, including the nights that need your yes
TravelPal reads each unit's availability with its minimum stay and its arrival and departure restrictions. Nights Direct marks as request only, where somebody on your team has to approve the stay, are read as unavailable, so nothing is offered that you would then have to decline. Direct publishes rates as defaults, overrides and length-of-stay bands rather than one price per night, so the calendar answers what is open and your own rate card answers what an upgrade costs. See how upsells are sold.
The quote, line by line
Every charge on a Direct booking arrives as its own line at its exact cent amount, and the Booking Total summary row is left out so the folio is never counted twice. The accommodation fare is added up from those lines rather than taken from Direct's whole-dollar totals, so what TravelPal reports back to you matches what Direct billed, to the cent.
What TravelPal writes back
Every message goes out through Direct, never around it, so your own inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
One rail: the Direct conversation
Direct documents a single way to reach a guest, the conversation on their booking, and a message goes out as the Direct user attached to that thread. There is no separate email or SMS send to branch onto, so the whole exchange sits in the one place your team already reads. Where a booking has no conversation yet, Direct publishes no route to open one, so first contact stays with your team and TravelPal picks the thread up from the guest's first line. See how the messaging works.
Upsells closed in the thread, at your prices
The offer, the guest's answer and the confirmation all happen inside the Direct conversation, because a message there is the only write Direct publishes into a guest's thread. The sale is recorded on the stay and handed to your team with the unit, the time and the amount on it, and Direct's own quote lines stay exactly as your team left them. TravelPal takes no commission on what it sells.
The door code stays yours
The one reservation field Direct documents as writable is the door code. TravelPal never writes it, and it drops the code Direct returns on every reservation read rather than keeping a copy of your locks. Nothing TravelPal does moves a rate, a date or a lock on a Direct booking, so your system of record reads exactly as your team left it.
Connected in four steps
Direct switches API access on for your account, and TravelPal does the rest itself.
Ask Direct for a key
Direct issues API keys on request rather than from a screen in your dashboard. One email to engineering@getdirect.io, the address Direct publishes for this in its own reference, and they send back the key and your numeric organization ID. It is a short note to the people who already run your account, and it is the only step that waits on anybody.
Prove it on staging first
Direct runs a public staging host and the TravelPal connection carries an environment setting for it, so your connection can be proved end to end on staging while production access is being arranged. Moving it across afterwards is one field on the same connection.
Paste the key and the organization ID
Your organization ID is numeric and sits in the address of every call rather than in a header, so a wrong digit points at a different organization. TravelPal checks it against Direct with a single read the moment you paste it, and nothing imports until that read comes back clean.
Direct points the event feed at you
Reservation events are switched on from Direct's side: you pass them the callback address TravelPal gives you and they register it. New and changed bookings arrive from then on, your units import in the background, and every stay gets its own private guest page. Direct publishes no time zone on a property or a unit, so you confirm each one once during onboarding and quiet hours follow it after that.
The dashboard shows the connection the whole way: connected, last sync, and any error in plain words. The rest of going live is covered in what onboarding involves.
What the Direct connection will not do
Every property management system draws its own lines, and the ones Direct draws are worth knowing before you switch anything on. TravelPal works inside them rather than around them.
Guest messages are checked, not announced
Direct's event list covers reservations, properties, rates, availability, promotions, statements and reviews. Messaging is not on it, so TravelPal checks your conversations on a cycle and a guest's first line is picked up on the next sweep rather than the second it is sent. Direct also publishes one request budget per key, two a second and twenty every ten seconds counted across every call whatever it is for, and the reservation sync, the calendar reads and the message check all draw on it. If you run several hundred units, ask about a higher ceiling in the same email that requests your key.
A paid time change does not land on the booking
Direct publishes no check-in or check-out time on a property or a unit, and the only documented update to a reservation is the door code. So a late checkout or early check-in the guest paid for is recorded on the stay and sent to your team and your cleaners rather than stamped onto the Direct reservation. An extra night is checked against that unit's availability and handed over the same way, because a date change is not a write this API offers.
Nowhere in the thread that only your team can see
The single write Direct publishes into a conversation produces a line the guest reads, and that same call is the only way to reach the guest at all, so there is no quieter rail to fall back to and TravelPal does not invent one. Where it is unsure it says nothing in the Direct thread, holds the stay, and asks your team in your own channel and by email. See what it holds and why.
Nothing numbers the guest across bookings
The customer on a Direct reservation is a name, an email, a telephone and a location, with no identifier on it. Direct's conversations do carry a customer number, and nothing published joins that number back to the customer on a booking, so there is no key that follows a person from one stay to the next. The profile TravelPal builds runs inside the stay, and the cross-stay history your team keeps elsewhere stays where it is.
Where the AI is not sure, it stops and asks your team rather than guessing. That is the same on every system: see the guardrails.
Direct integration FAQ
Does Direct have to switch anything on before TravelPal can connect?
Yes, and it is one email. Direct issues API keys by request to its engineering team rather than from a self-serve screen, and it sends back the key and your numeric organization ID. Their API reference is public and they run a staging host, so your connection can be proved on staging while production access is arranged.
My Direct property has twelve units. How does that map to TravelPal?
As twelve properties, one per unit. In Direct the property is the building and the unit is what a guest books, a reservation names both, and availability is read per unit, so TravelPal follows the unit. The building's shared amenities carry onto each one alongside that unit's own features.
Where do TravelPal's replies appear in Direct?
In the conversation on that booking, sent as the Direct user attached to the thread, so your own inbox shows exactly what each guest was told. Direct's API has no separate email or SMS send, so there is one place to look. If a booking has no conversation yet, Direct publishes no route to start one, so first contact stays with your team.
Can TravelPal change a Direct reservation?
No. The only reservation field Direct documents as writable is the door code, and TravelPal never writes it. A sold late checkout, early check-in or extra night is priced, taken and recorded on the stay, then handed to your team with the unit and the time on it. Nights are checked against that unit's availability before anything is offered.
Does connecting Direct cost extra?
No. A unit in TravelPal is a unit in Direct, so the count you are billed on at the flat monthly price is the one you already know.
Not the system you run?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. These are the ones nearest Direct in how widely they are used.
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