AI guest messaging for ParcVu holiday parks
TravelPal connects to ParcVu through Booking Experts, which acquired it in 2024 and runs the API behind it, then reads your park's rentables, reservations, and customers. Guest messages go out as a Booking Experts message template with TravelPal's words inside it, addressed to the reservation, and Booking Experts delivers them by email or SMS. Replies land where your park already takes email and SMS, with your team, because this API publishes no event for an incoming message.
One connection, running both ways. Every item on it is detailed below.
What TravelPal reads from ParcVu
ParcVu is UK holiday and caravan park software, now part of Booking Experts, which reports more than 800 parks and 130,000 system users across 14 countries, from 50-pitch sites up to parks above 20,000 pitches.
Rentables become properties
Booking Experts calls a unit a rentable, and each one arrives with its name, description, address, city, and coordinates. Names and descriptions come keyed by language, so a park that keeps both Dutch and English ends up with one readable unit name rather than the whole set. A rentable counts as live when today falls inside its active window, which is how a seasonal pitch that closes over winter stops being talked about. It carries no photos, no check-in time, and no check-out time, and the one clock this API publishes sits on the park rather than the unit and is written as a city name, so arrival times, departure times, and the park's time zone are settled with you at setup instead of guessed.
Reservations, and the unit assigned later
A park sells a type of accommodation and often allocates the physical pitch or lodge afterward, so a booking can exist before it points at any rentable. TravelPal waits rather than attaching the guest to a category: the stay is set up once your team assigns the unit, and the next sweep picks it up. Each reservation brings the booking reference a guest will quote back to you, the party size, the dates, and the currency your park charges in.
Which reservations are really stays
Booking Experts publishes twenty-three reservation states, and most of them are concepts, options, and temporary holds rather than somebody who is coming. TravelPal treats a confirmed reservation as a stay, stops the moment a cancellation starts rather than waiting for it to finish, and leaves a held option alone so nobody with a basket open gets a welcome message. A state that cannot be read with certainty, which is what a freshly migrated park's older bookings often arrive in, is held and raised with you rather than greeted.
Owners, guests, and the language they booked in
The booking carries an owner relationship for owner-occupied caravans and lodges, the one channel distinction this API states outright, so TravelPal knows when the person arriving owns the unit. The customer behind a booking is a real person record, stable across that person's stays at your park, which is how a family that comes back every August is recognized instead of met as a stranger. Their locale rides along, from the set Booking Experts publishes: Dutch, German, French, Czech, Polish, and more.
The access code stays out of the concierge
A Booking Experts reservation carries the guest access code, which at a park is the barrier or door code. TravelPal strips it before the record is stored and before the AI ever reads the reservation, so it cannot be quoted back to whoever is asking. Your own arrival mail keeps that job: see how TravelPal handles sensitive details.
What TravelPal writes back
Every message goes out through ParcVu, never around it, so your own inbox shows exactly what each guest was told.
Messages go out as a Booking Experts template
This API sends from templates rather than free text, so TravelPal's words travel as the value of a variable inside a template defined for your park. Booking Experts performs the delivery itself and picks email or SMS, and every send is addressed to the reservation, so the message belongs to the stay. A customer with neither an email address nor a phone number on file is reported unreachable rather than quietly skipped.
Offers a park can actually sell
TravelPal makes the offer in the message and the guest takes it on their own private link: an extra night, a later departure, a bike rental, whatever your park sells, at your prices. Booking Experts totals extras and accommodation into one figure on the reservation, so TravelPal records what it sold rather than reading the number back off the booking, and the confirmed extra reaches your team to apply. See how upsells work.
Sale notes and held questions reach your team
Booking Experts keeps one note field on a booking and it belongs to your park, so writing to it would overwrite what your own team put there. TravelPal leaves it alone. A sale to apply, or a question TravelPal is holding for a person instead of answering, goes to your team channel and by email.
Connected in four steps
ParcVu switches API access on for your account, and TravelPal does the rest itself.
Ask Booking Experts for app access
Booking Experts Apps is invite only. Access starts at their developer contact form, then a short call about what you are connecting, then a demo administration to install on. That is one message to your Booking Experts contact, and it is the thing to start first, because the key comes out of it.
Install TravelPal and paste the key with your park ID
The API key is issued when our app is installed on your organization. Paste it into TravelPal with the administration ID, the numeric id Booking Experts uses for your park. The two are checked together against your park's own rentables before the connection saves, so a key pointed at the wrong park is caught then rather than turning up later as an empty portfolio.
Paste your callback URL into the app settings
Subscriptions are added by hand in the Booking Experts app settings, and TravelPal hands you the URL to paste. It carries a secret of its own, so a delivery that does not present that secret is refused. New reservations, check-ins, and check-outs then arrive as they happen, and a sweep of your arrival window backfills the stays already on the books.
Name the message template and the variable inside it
Sending needs the template identifier and the exact name of the custom variable that carries the text, the body in {{ body }}. Until both are set the connection reads your park and messages nobody. Get the variable name wrong and Booking Experts still reports success while the guest reads a template with our words missing, so the last step is one real test send to a reservation of your own, read on the phone that receives it.
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 ParcVu connection will not do
Every property management system draws its own lines, and the ones ParcVu draws are worth knowing before you switch anything on. TravelPal works inside them rather than around them.
Guest replies do not come back through ParcVu
Booking Experts publishes no event for an incoming message and no guest thread this connection can read, so an answer to one of our messages goes wherever your park already receives email and SMS, and your team picks it up. A guest who came through a reseller is reached the same way, by email or SMS, not inside that channel's own inbox. TravelPal's side here is proactive: arrival instructions, offers, reminders, and follow-ups on the schedule you set. See how messaging works.
Nothing is written onto the reservation
No date change, no arrival or departure time, no calendar hold. There is no arrival-window field on a Booking Experts reservation, and channels at a park are free-text rows your own team created, with no fixed name for one source or another, so a booking cannot be proven to be yours to rewrite rather than a reseller's. TravelPal sells and tells: what a guest bought reaches your team to put on the booking.
The template is yours, and your park can edit it
The wrapper our words land in is a Booking Experts template your own administrators can change, and a send reports success without returning a copy of what the guest received. Agree the template before go-live, and read it again after anybody edits your park's message templates: a variable taken out of it would leave our words missing from a message that otherwise looks normal.
One park per connection
Booking Experts calls a park an administration, and reservation 1 at your park is a different booking from reservation 1 at the park down the road. Subscriptions belong to the app rather than to one park, so a group's parks all arrive at the same address, and TravelPal refuses any delivery naming a park other than the one it is connected to. A group running several parks needs one connection per park, so tell us the count before go-live.
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.
ParcVu integration FAQ
Do I need Booking Experts to switch something on before TravelPal can connect?
Yes. Booking Experts Apps is invite only, so access starts with their developer contact form and a short call, after which you get a demo administration, install TravelPal, and receive the API key. It is one message to your Booking Experts contact, and it is worth sending before anything else, because the key comes out of it.
Can TravelPal hold a conversation with a guest at our park?
Not through this connection. Booking Experts delivers our messages by email or SMS, publishes no event for an incoming reply, and exposes no guest thread to read, so a reply lands where your park already receives email and SMS and your team answers it. What TravelPal does here is proactive: arrival instructions, offers, reminders, and follow-ups, in the language the guest booked in, on the schedule you set.
Why does TravelPal ask for a message template identifier?
Because Booking Experts sends guest messages from templates rather than free text. TravelPal's words travel as the value of a custom variable inside a template defined for your park, so the connection needs that template's identifier and the exact name of the variable. A wrong name is accepted by the API while the guest reads the template with our words missing, which is why setup ends with one real test send you read yourself.
We run several parks. Is that one connection?
No. Booking Experts calls a park an administration, and ids are unique only inside one, so reservation 1 at your park and reservation 1 at the next are different bookings. Each park is connected in its own right, and TravelPal refuses any event that names a park other than the one it is connected to. Tell us how many parks are in the group before go-live so the setup is planned around it.
Does connecting ParcVu cost extra?
No. At a park a unit is a rentable, so the pitches, caravans, and lodges you put on the connection are what the flat monthly price counts.
Not the system you run?
TravelPal connects to 33 property management systems. These are the ones nearest ParcVu in how widely they are used.
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