Question 1

What is Hydra Booking Engine?

Accepted Answer

Hydra Booking Engine is an embeddable booking widget for hotel websites. It shows live availability and pricing synced from Hydra PMS, accepts payment through OTP SimplePay, and feeds every booking straight into the PMS — so guests can book directly with the hotel instead of through an OTA.

Question 2

Does Hydra Booking Engine accept SZÉP card payments?

Accepted Answer

Not yet. Payments run on OTP SimplePay, Hungary's trusted gateway that settles natively in HUF, and SZÉP card support is planned as a next step once that onboarding is complete. Bank transfer is available today as a gateway-free alternative alongside card payment.

Question 3

Does the booking widget sync with Hydra PMS?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in both directions. Rate codes, room types, and seasons push to the widget whenever they change in the PMS; live availability pushes every 5 minutes. New web bookings flow into the PMS for confirmation, and cancellations reconcile both ways.

Question 4

Can the widget match a hotel's own branding?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A hotel picks between two built-in visual styles — After Hours (a dark, near-black wizard-style flow) or Ledger (a stone-paper, hotel-register look) — then sets its own primary and accent colors and chooses light, dark, or auto mode, all from the dashboard with no code changes.

Question 5

Can a hotel use its own domain for the booking widget?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Once a hotel points a subdomain like book.theirhotel.hu at the booking engine, every guest-facing link — confirmation emails, the payment redirect, booking management — uses that domain instead of a shared platform URL.

Question 6

What happens if a room is fully booked?

Accepted Answer

Guests can join a waitlist. The booking engine re-checks availability automatically and sends an email the moment a matching room frees up.

Question 7

Does the widget support multiple languages?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The widget ships in English, German, and Hungarian, auto-detected from the page or set explicitly, with a switcher the guest can use themselves.

Question 8

Can guests manage their own booking after they book?

Accepted Answer

Yes. A guest can view their booking status, cancel it (until the arrival date), retry a failed payment, add extras, request a modification, or download an .ics calendar file — all without creating an account.

Question 9

Does the tourism tax (IFA) get charged through the booking widget?

Accepted Answer

No. If a hotel sets its per-adult-per-night tourism tax rate, the widget shows guests an estimate at checkout so there are no surprises on arrival — but it's informational only. It's never added to the total charged through Hydra Booking Engine; it's always collected at the hotel.

Hydra Booking Enginev1.7

Try the real booking widget your guests will use

Key Features

Embeddable booking widget

Live availability calendar

OTP SimplePay payments

Guest self-service

Benefits

More Direct Bookings

Fully Branded Experience

Always in Sync with the PMS

Hydra Booking Engine