API-first booking price aggregator
Project summary
We delivered an OpenTravel booking aggregator that centralizes hospitality services (hotels, flights, and more). One integration that replaces numerous connections.
The volatility in availability and pricing is immense, which makes 1-3 updates a day a critical business feature.
Services:
Project overview
Our client is a US-based organization that supplies travel resellers with direct-connect distribution platforms. The company provides modern, regulatory compliant, B2B & Host2Host solutions for hotel & resort, flight, car, and other popular types of bookings.
Abto Software has entered a collaboration to work on several unprecedented direct-connect API integrations. Our team successfully delivered a solution allowing resellers and distributors to connect with travel and hospitality vendors to provide their services more efficiently.
Main goals
Our engineers were contracted to develop a reliable cloud-based solution that uses API-based integrations (OpenTravel standard) to receive and store up-to-date information (rooms, tickets, dates, prices, and more).
The project was divided into two main phases:
- To start, we built an aggregator to receive and store up-to-date information for future service provision – the data is accessible for resellers via API
- At the second stage, we integrated instant notifications to inform interested parties about changes associated with placed or canceled bookings, different pricing, and other relevant shifts
How the solution works
The solution is designed to gather and provide travel and lifestyle resellers with everyday updated information. By using SOAP requests and with Open Travel standard utilized, our system regularly collects predefined data from previously specified sources and requests.
The solution gathers data 1-3 times a day, allowing resellers to update relevant information in a timely manner. When detecting placed reservations and cancellations, the system sends repeated SOAP requests, as these can impact the pricing.
The process in brief:
- The system automatically sends a request to a specific provider to receive a list of vendors to monitor
- By sending SOAP requests, the system automatically collects up-to-date information indicating available hotel rooms, flight tickets, dates, prices, and more
- The company receives a comprehensive summary that contains relevant details for the year ahead
- The company then applies up-to-date information to provide seamless booking
Other features to mention:
- If the booked flight is postponed or canceled, the system automatically rearranges the trip, from flight to hotel and other indicated services (car rental, golf court, spa services)
- If one of the multiple rooms being booked is reserved by someone else prior to completion, the system automatically interrupts the reservation to eliminate additional inconveniences with cancellation
One API for hundreds of partners
Our contribution
Abto Software has worked on implementing API-based integrations with direct-connect distribution platforms. Our team has built a real-time data aggregator for a B2B model that receives and stores relevant information about bookings and cancellations from numerous external sources.
We handled the storing and processing of information on bookings and continue to maintain the connection with vendors that provide relevant options, for example, Hilton, BestWestern, IHG, TFN, Holiday Inn, Accor, etc. To maximize the benefit, our engineers also implemented instant notifications to inform interested parties about changes associated with placed or canceled reservations, current pricing, new offers, and more.
We handled the storing and processing of information on bookings and continue to maintain the connection with vendors that offer relevant options, for example, Hilton, BestWestern, IHG, Accor, Holiday Inn, and more. To maximize the benefit, our engineers also implemented instant notifications to inform interested parties about changes associated with placed or canceled reservations, current pricing, new offers, and more.
This approach improves efficiency, enhances automation, and ensures data accessibility in a large network.
We covered:
a. Technical analysis
b. Approach selection and validation
c. Software development, in particular API-based integrations:
– To simplify hotel navigation (booking, cancellation, price and offer tracking)
– To simplify flight navigation (booking, cancellation)
– To aggregate multiple vendors in one single place to ease reservation management
– For notifications on availability and pricing
d. Product support and maintenance
Main challenges and solutions
Ensuring uninterrupted request processing and optimized response times
We created a custom multi-threaded solution sending requests to vendors at regular, predetermined intervals. This way, we minimized the time it takes to update relevant prices.
What’s more, we implemented information caching on the server side to accelerate information transmission. That way, when detecting repeated requests with the same parameters, we can transfer details much faster and send instant notifications on changes in pricing.
Minimizing daily server load
We faced the problem that oftentimes hotel chains don’t provide necessary information on one single request. In case of large-scale hotel chains, that means that obtaining up-to-date information on availability and pricing might require multiple requests.
For example, if the hotel chain is operating 50 facilities, we need to send 50 requests to collect relevant details on the defined parameters, which requires significant resources and poses additional challenges.
To resolve this problem, we designed and implemented a solution to minimize the load on the vendor’s server. In brief, the solution is sending the requests only once a day at night, after which relevant details are updated once or twice during the day, which depends on whether important changes have occurred.
What’s more, to boost the efficiency of the whole process, the information is updated for several days ahead. This means if any important changes (bookings, cancellations) may occur, the information is updated only once to minimize the number of requests and eliminate the chance of lockout.
Ensuring security
To provide appropriate security to the SOAP API, we added security tokens.
Unifying different, non-uniform responses
To provide heterogeneous responses, we implemented a solution that allows unifying responses received from different vendors.
One API, no more vendor-specific integrations
Tools and technologies
Tech stack:
- Java
- String
- Hibernate
- Mongo DB
- Docker
- Java Spring
- REST API
- SOAP API
Cloud services:
- AWS S3
- AWS EKS
Timeline:
- April 2022 – December 2022
Team:
- 1 project manager
- 1 frontend engineer
- 2 backend developers
Value delivered to business
The client can use the solution to reach potential customers across different travel and lifestyle verticals:
- Service suppliers (hotel chains, airlines, rentals, golf courses, spa facilities)
- Service resellers (tour operators, receptive operators, products aggregators, marketing organizations)
Respectively enjoying:
- Routine automation
- Data accessibility to improve business efficiency (for example, quickly accessible best prices)
- Greater potential customer reach
- Streamlined revenue and growth
The company that uses the aggregator can eliminate the need to contact each vendor separately for updates. The result: one standard API only to gather and process up-to-date information from the extensive network, saving time and cost.
Our team can cover API integration to provide business leaders across industries with reliable, relevant data. Open travel API and payment gateway API integration, as well as online transportation booking API integration to optimize government digital services (GDS), and more.