Techtalks: Traveltech
What do I need to start a car hire aggregator?
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.
asked Nov 6, 2019
answered Nov 14, 2019
Hello Mayur,
Thank you for your interest. First, we’d like to specify that further by a car hire aggregator we’ll mean a metasearch that aggregates car rental offers from multiple suppliers. Please let us know if you had another idea in mind so that we can advise you accordingly.
So, building the infrastructure of a car rentals aggregator, you’ll have to take care of:
Inventory connection via APIs. Global distribution systems can give you access to a large car rental inventory. But car rental companies are increasingly switching to direct connect solutions rather than traditional distribution channels. Deciding on suppliers to connect to, our car rental APIs catalog should be of use to you.
Crawlers for web scraping. Sometimes suppliers don’t allow for direct connection, so aggregators resort to web scraping. They launch a program that mimics human activity to extract data from the supplier’s website.
Data mapping. Each provider you distribute has its own way of presenting data. So you’ll need to group and process data first and then display it comprehensively on your side while keeping it up-to-date.
Meta ranking. You need to compare car rental prices using business rules aka algorithms.
Database. Integrates with all the suppliers, database stores all the fetched data, that later can be used for tracking, reporting, and statistics. Such modules as a background sync process for static data and data cache control will help you manage the up-to-dateness of your DB.
Search engine. The core of any aggregator system, search engine handles queries and searches through the databases. From the backed, it crunches data. From the front end, it provides the customer with the search results - cars for rent, in our case.
If you plan to distribute car rental offers worldwide, you’ll need language and currency functions. Since aggregators don’t facilitate booking, you don’t have to worry about accounting and payment processing modules.
AltexSoft has expertise in building booking platforms. So, you can consult our team to get more specific recommendations.