Techtalks: Traveltech

Hi, I've learned so much reading your articles, thank you!

I want to make a metasearch site for hotels, like Tripadvisor or Trivago. What is the best way to get that data?

All of the API's I'm finding are intended for Hotels to send data, not for people to request data. Are there API's for each OTA and also for each direct booking site?

Is there anyone who aggregates all of that data and provides it via API? That would certainly make things much easier...

Another question:

Is it possible to get 'logged in' rates for places like hotels.com? They have 'Secret Prices' that you have to be logged in to see. I'd like to have this data if possible but I can't find a way to get it via API.

Thanks!

I am looking for a Bus booking system using GDS and Which one is providing sandbox access for testing.

does someone know if there is option to access the open API of the seats map of the site of seat guru?
if not :
is there another way to get the seats map by the flight number.

I'm looking for an API that will give me access to hotel information.
I need the hotel's name, address (ideally GPS coordinates as well) and chain affiliation (IHG, Hilton, independent etc.).
I think Kayak has that information available, but I don't want to support booking. I only want to visualize some information about the hotels.
Can you recommend an API?

Hi!

I have a question in regards to the Payment Processing models or actual setups that are used by OTAs. I am not talking about Booking.com or Expedia, it's mostly a question of how new and smaller OTAs set up their payment procedures.
For example, when a customer books a trip on the "Random Travel" website, the customer's credit card gets charged by the travel agency and then the payment goes to the actual property or an airline, right?

What are the other options?
And what payment processors can be used by the OTA to charge their customers?

For example, Stripe charges 2.9%+ 0.30c for every transaction, and +1% for every international transaction. This is a lot of money for small OTAs, since the commission is also shared with the Host agency. So if we take an example of a $100 hotel booking, the commission is 10%, in most cases, which is $10. Will say Host agency takes 30% of the commission, that's $3. Stripe takes 2.9% of the entire amount paid, which is another $3.
In the end of the day, the agency is left with $3-4 commission.

So my question is: what are the ways to set up an efficient payment process and what could be the options?

Sorry for the long question. It's really something I am trying to understand.

Hey
i read a lot of articles from altexsoft and Its really amazing.
i want to start with an OTA of my own and I'm not sure how I'm going to do that because there is a lot of things i need to put attention.
do you can help me what is the best way to do that?

I read their doc and all it says is that Flight Create Orders API creates a PNR on the airline’s reservation system. You’ll receive payment from the customer and then pay the airline.Finally, a ticket is issued once payment is received and the reservation has been logged.

I have contacted with one of consolidator, but the overall flow is still unclear staring after Flight Create Orders API returns successfully. Could anyone elaborate on the process (a step by step break down on what we should do till final booking is made)?

Thank you.

I want to query flights form A to B with 1 stop. Now I want to specify the airport where I would change flights. Which API is the best for that? Thanks in advance.

What is the typical commission fee that OTAs get from airlines?

Hi folks, Great site - there's so much quality info up here. I am hoping someone could explain how to begin partnering with OTAs as a new entrant to the traveltech space. I note a general unwillingness of large OTAs to offer affiliate accounts (or access to their APIs) to newcomers without an existing user base. I might understand this in the case of bloggers. However, when building an app that relies on access to availability and pricing data, how can one get started in this area? Is it generally better to become a travel agent instead of an affiliate? Thanks for sharing any insights.

Is there an API out there that would provide cruise prices for the major cruise lines? Or is web scraping my only alternative?

I'm just getting started building a prototype for a OTA startup and I want to incorporate real-time flight fare data. I've read the overview article on travel APIs and have gotten started using the Amadeus self-service API. However the Amadeus API seems limited in how the flight offers are bundled—it appears that flight offers are a bundle of departing a returning flights instead of allowing the user to select which flights they want for each segment.

I've briefly looked at the other GDSs to what their APIs offer but it appears that neither of them offer self-service. Does anyone have experience getting access to their APIs for prototyping purposes? Additionally, their APIs seem to be a bit dated in terms of the tech (SOAP vs REST, XML vs JSON).

I've also considered "downstream" flight fare APIs like Skyscanner. I applied for a Skyscanner account but have not received any response after a week. I'm curious whether they have revenue requirements that need to be met in order to get access. Are their other non-GDSs APIs worth considering?

Another thought was to look at ATPCO for flight fare data. I'm not exactly sure where ATPCO fits into this picture in terms of the data they have.

Any advice or direction is welcome. I'm just getting started in the flight API space. I have significant tech experience but the travel tech space is completely new to me. Also, it might be worth mentioning that I'm US-based and would be looking to start with domestic flight data to begin.

Thanks!

What is the best way to build or source a price comparison widget/plugin for WordPress that shows booking.com and Expedia price alongside a hotel direct price in real time?

If I wanted to start car hire aggregator business. Where do I start and what would I need? I'm more interested in knowing what would I need in terms of Backend System, booking system etc.. I know I would need access to API to get the car, location etc But would love to know where to start apart from access to API. Many thanks in advance for your help.

Hello. I was reading lot of your articles, they are super informative and helpful, so thanks you for that!! So, I am trying to understand how all of these commission based flight search engine works? you giving them some parameters, based on this parameters they return you wide range on flights. and when you trying to actually book a flight, they are sending you to some travel agents/ carrier companies with their affiliate link (am i wrong?). so, I registered to Amadeus API, as i understood its like the widest data source for that, so now i have the access to the most of the flights data. but the only option that given there is to book right trough the GDS itself- what makes you the agent by yourself (in case you allowed to book though GDS of course). But what is the source these search engines are using to take all of this info of prices of agencies and carriers for each flight? or am I wrong with all of my assumption? Thanks!