Travellers nowadays do proper research before booking their trips or packages. According to a study, a common traveller does 4.4 unique website searches before making a decision. People also prefer ‘all-in-one-place platforms for their reservation bookings rather than switching their apps for different requirements. And for any Travel Business to cater to the requirement of their customer, it becomes essential to bring the desired content on their online platform. To offer online booking services, Travel Business would need to pick data from various inventory sources, and that is where travel API comes into place.
In the past few years, api integrations have reshaped how the Travel Business are utilizing the content from various sources and create great user experience for their travelers.
Seeing this trend, online travel agents(OTAs) have become a lot more open to sharing data.
Table of Contents
What is Travel API?
API is a set of web services that facilitates access to data sources which can be helpful for OTAs in sustaining their customers. This is usually done by providing information such as hotel booking information, flight information, transport option, traffic conditions and more.
APIs are also capable to create or modify orders and manage payments, by interacting with providers of transport and hospitality services.
Do you need a third party API integration?
Third party travel API integration is not essential for a very small agency who are handling a handful of customers or operating within a very small region.
In that case, their direct contracts with a few local suppliers are sufficient. But to scale a travel business, having a large pool of inventory becomes vital, as beyond a point it becomes incredibly difficult and costly to physically go and get direct sign contracts with thousands of suppliers based in different regions.
GDS, third-party flight APIs, hotel APIs, Car APIs, and sightseeing APIs — all are highly used these days by travel agencies to access travel deals online.
Why should you use Travel APIs?
There are two key reasons to use Travel APIs apart from providing a rich user experience to your online visitors, That is to make the consumption and provisioning of travel services more efficient:
- Efficient travel consumption—Travel-oriented companies and large enterprises can use travel APIs to connect their IT systems directly to travel service providers; automating the booking and optimizing the travel plans. This eventually reduces the operational costs for corporate travel agencies.
- Efficient travel provisioning—Online Travel Agencies or any other application that helps travelers plan a trip or purchase travel services, can use travel APIs to provide richer and smarter services to their users. For example, a hotel booking site can enrich its services by providing data on flight and sightseeing options, via additional travel APIs.
Types of Travel API and How they function
An API allows the connection between data streams and other functionalities of various software products. In short, APIs act as control panels for developers, that can be linked to different software components without dealing with source code.
To understand this better, let’s assume you run a hotel business, Now you want to let your customers rent a car straight from your website apart from your hotel booking service. This could be super easy by integrating your room reservation engine with available local car rental providers. This may put a car-rental commission in your pocket; but at the same time, make your customer’s life easier by eliminating time browsing the web to rent a car. That ultimately retains your customers.
Moving ahead, let’s get into the types of APIs that are commonly used worldwide:
1. Global Distribution System (GDS) APIs- It is an aggregator of travel data that serves booking websites and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) . This API provides the required data and enables 5 key reservations of hotels, airline seats, car rental companies, railways, cruise lines & ferries, and more.
This enables resellers of travel services to connect to one API, rather than interacting with each service provider.
Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport are the top 3 GDS providers that control almost 100% of the market. Their APIs are detailed below.
| GDS API | Offerings |
| Amadeus API | With its two variants(self-service and enterprise) amadeus APIs are used for airlines, railroads, hotels, car rentals, airport private shuttles or taxi transfers, cruises, travel insurance reservations. |
| Sabre API | Sabre API covers the same set of functions as the Amadeus APIs. You can see its APIs into eight different groups. HotelsAirlinesUtilityGround transportation (car rentals and rails)Session managementProfilesTrip managementCruisesHence, providing management of traveler profiles and end-to-end trips |
| Travelport API | Sabre API covers the same set of functions as the Amadeus APIs. You can see its APIs in eight different groups. HotelsAirlinesUtilityGround transportation (car rentals and rails)Session managementProfilesTrip managementCruisesHence, providing management of traveler profiles and end-to-end trips |
Flight Booking API
Though you can provide flight information via GDS API, for more granular control over flight booking details and allow travel agencies to customize reservations and obtain reduced rates flight booking APIs are required. Galileo, multilink, and Go air API are some of the worldwide known travel booking APIs. Whereas two key flight search APIs are the Skyscanner API and the Flightstats API.
| Flight Booking API | Offerings |
| SKyscanner API | This API looks into the flight prices for a variety of destinations and time ranges (based on cached data), and querying real-time price data for precise flight queries. Rates are based on an affiliate agreement—you must be examined and approved to receive access to the API. |
| Flightstats API | Current and historical flight status, schedules and connections, aircraft details, schedules, delays and standard performance ratings for flights, weather information, and real-time data on flight disruptions. |
Hotel Rooms Reservations API
There are several providers of hotel room inventories. Booking.com and Expedia are the largest, but additional providers like Jack Travel, TBO hotels, Orbitz, Hotwire, and Agoda offer inventories in specific locations or niches. By connecting to their APIs, you can get specific room information and booking information, and at the same time can handle reservations and cancellations across their inventories.
Car APIs
Most car APIs allow you to build packages that include car rentals, flights, and hotels. Various providers focus on car rental in their APIs, allowing you to leverage inventory from their fleets or big car rental brands.
5 Key Benefits of Travel APIs
1. Increase Traffic to your app & website by allowing data sharing between two companies– Online travel agencies(OTAs) have an inventory of flights, hotels, activities, taxi service, etc, which they might have acquired from several API of different companies. That can be easily shared via Travel APIs.
2. API saves a huge amount of time– Various companies provide APIs that can be used by developers to add flight, hotel, rental car booking, and other capabilities to their applications. Otherwise, all the inventory needs to be collected additionally.
3. Easy to implement Travel APIs makes the process smoother– APIs are the heartbeat of any online travel agencies. It permits a travel agent to integrate API for hotel booking, flight booking, along with third-party API integration on the travel agent’s site.
4. Travel APIs help you retain your customer- With API integration, when a customer searches to book a hotel or flight on your travel site, the airline API and flight ticket booking API ensure that they stay on your site. This integration guarantees that the payment is collected by your travel agency only.
5. Helps in Dynamic packaging– API service provider shows packages for flight, hotels, cars, and other APIs with flexible pricing. You can get a dynamic package integrated depending on your need. And all modifications can be implemented quickly and your travel business continues to evolve.
Points to consider before selecting a service provider for API integration
- Do they provide thorough support while you are integrating the API? Do they have proper documentation available? In many cases, people face these and it took more than 7month to implement the APIs
- Do they provide you with a competitive price for the tickets? In many cases, they may provide you with an API in less price but ticket price will be higher and eventually leave you regretful about your decision.
- Do they get you a readymade portal or build it from stretch? If you prefer a cheaper option, the readymade portal will be your best choice. However, if you do not want to compromise on any aspect of your idea, you should build it from scratch.
- Do they have their portal/app in b2c, b2b or b2b2c? This is essential to know as you will face many issues that they might not be aware of.
The process involved in Travel API integration
1) Supplier Selection
When choosing a supplier for your travel agency, start by conducting thorough research. Ensure the supplier meets your needs based on factors such as availability, region, rates, and requirements.
One Supplier might have a wide range of hotels & better rates in your region than another supplier, so it’s a good practice to check their rates and availability beforehand. And make your own research as not every supplier provides multiple modules (eg hotels, air, activities etc) in their API.
So, if you intend to sell hotels, flights, and cars, you need to either select a supplier that provides all three or integrate multiple suppliers.
2) Signing the Contract & API Documentation
Once you have selected the supplier you want to contract with, you need to sign an API contract with them. As discussed above, a supplier may provide multiple APIs for different modules. You will need a detailed contract covering all modules you choose, with separate APIs as required.
You might also need to pay a deposit. However, if you have a good relationship & you have given good volumes, suppliers may lesen the API charge or even be free of charge.
Once you complete the contract procedure, the supplier will send you and your technology provider an API document along with test access. This document includes all technical details about the API, such as the various parameters, rules, and services it encompasses. This is where a reliable & trusted technology partner comes into the picture.
3) API document Assessment and Development
Once you complete the API documentation, your technology partner will study the API and assess its technical feasibility for their booking engine. This assessment helps them decide whether the API is ready for deployment or if they need to modify their XML connector or build a completely new connector.
Each API demands a separate connector and mapping, so if you have multiple APIs, your technology partner will have to build multiple connectors.
4) Certification and Integration
Once the certification is complete, the supplier will provide you credentials to access their live feeds which can be used for bookings. After that, your technology partner will replace the test feeds with the live ones and integrate them into the booking engine.
Our expertise in assembling feeds from multiple suppliers provides you a single interface to access all third-party data, rather than jumbling between multiple screens.
5) Post Integration
The search response speed depends on several factors, including the architecture of the booking engine, the server location, the APIs integrated, and more. However, the key factor is the supplier response time. Some suppliers take longer to respond than others.
10–12 seconds is the average response time from the supplier side. Hence, while choosing a supplier, you need to pay attention to speed and rates, as many suppliers who have good rates provide a relatively slow response time and vice-versa.
So it’s important to discuss any speed issues with your technology partner.
That’s why, it becomes essential to choose your travel technology partner who updates at regular intervals, ensuring your integrated inventory is up-to-date.
That’s all about travel APIs, Types of APIs, benefits of APIs, and the integration process you need to know as a growing travel business owner.
Meanwhile, if you need to first set up your online travel business, then do check out our MakemyTrip Clone Solutions which have 50+ pre-integrated APIs to scale your travel business.
Frequently Asked Questions for Travel API Integration
Q. What is a travel API?
A. A Travel API provides a set of web services that allow you to access travel data from different portals. It’s a kind of control panel for linking with software components without dealing with the code itself.
Q. How does a travel API work?
A. Travel APIs work on a simple logic; It fetch online travel data (flights, hotel cost, availability, destinations) from one portal and allows third-party resources to get access to this information.
Q. How do I integrate travel API into my website?
A. In short, just call the respective customer support of the supplier and ask them to connect to the technical team as you need to Integrate their inventory into your website after mentioning your location.
Now, some business guy in your location will connect with you, discuss your terms and conditions, and sign the agreement.
Once everything goes fine with their tech team, they will share their Inventory API document with you, which you can integrate with your website with the help of your technical team.
Q. How much travel API will cost?
A. The cost of travel API depends on the services you are choosing and the supplier. The charge usually starts from INR 10, 000 and goes up to lakhs. The more services you integrate the more you need to pay.
Q. From where I can get cheap and the best travel API integration?
A. There are several travel portal companies from where you can get the travel API integration. To get a cost-effective and technologically advanced travel API integration, explore top suppliers that meet your customized requirements. This solution should be flexible and include new features.
Q. Why Do I Need API Integration for Travel Portal?
A. API integration has become necessary for travel portals nowadays. Because users prefer a place where they can customize their travel-related searches and they do not want to switch between apps for the same. This is where API provides them with the same comfort & facility. If a travel portal owner wishes to scale their business, integration of an API becomes essential.
Q. What is 3rd party API integration?
A. If you don’t have your API, then you can integrate API from 3rd party suppliers on your own app/ website. This is referred to as 3rd party API integration.
Shivam Rathore