According to a report published by TripAdvisor and comScore in 2017, many people prefer to make their reservations through “one-stop” platforms because these platforms meet all the needs of travelers in one place.
For this reason, key players in the tourism industry welcome the sharing of tourism data with each other, and these connections are always growing.
The synonym of this growing connection, in the field of technology, is called API or web service. In this post, the most important tourism APIs, which are used to aggregate tourism information in one place, have been reviewed.
Application programming interface or API creates data flow and connectivity between different software products.
What does this concept mean in the tourism industry? For example, if you own a hotel, you can connect your platform’s reservation system to car rental providers so that customers can rent their desired car directly through your website.
The main data source and booking point for online travel agencies (OTAs) are global distribution systems (GDS).
A GDS collects and aggregates travel data from a wide range of travel service providers, allowing travel agencies to book airline seats, trains, hotel rooms and car rentals for their customers.
Dhisco enables connecting travel agencies, metasearch engines and GDSs to hotel chains.
DerbySoft communicates with a variety of hotels, integrates with some hotel management software such as Oracle Opera or TravelClick, and provides access to these software for more than 150 online travel agencies.
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For many travelers, the pictures of the place of residence and its surroundings are very important. Some travelers also tend to compare the offers of different tour operators. Content tourism APIs help them in this regard.
GIATA API connects to around 500 content providers such as tour operators and various travel agencies. Its XML interface allows mapping at all levels, the possibility of searching for different content, from images and videos to comparing tour operators with each other.
Mapping Works is a set of APIs that help property owners and OTAs map their properties. This API works on two mapping levels: hotel mapping and room mapping.
This API allows searching for information about places, restaurants and tourist attractions and provides details such as location ID, property name, addresses and latitude and longitude.
70% of people check nearly 20 different reviews before booking a travel service online. TripAdvisor is an authoritative source that contains more than 200 million registered reviews. The user can read the opinions of different people about a tourist attraction, hotel or restaurant and record his own opinion.
If you are looking to add a car rental option to your website, you can consider their services. Because Rentalcars provides car rental in almost 163 countries and 60,000 different tourist locations.
CarTrawler is a B2B service that connects international travel agencies and airlines with local car rental suppliers. Currently, this company offers its services in 43,500 tourist locations in 190 countries.
APIs of local operators, such as the API of the Dutch Railways and the French National Railways, provide real-time updates and additional data (such as the possibility to rent a car or bike near a railway station). Besides, they also send real-time updates about the engineering work done or disruptions in the railway line.
Concur offers a cloud-based travel management platform where businesses can track and manage travel expenses in addition to booking flight seats, hotel rooms, and car rentals.
Tripit, another product from Concur, integrates the user’s travel data such as flight, hotel and restaurant reservation confirmations, turning them into a neat and organized travel plan. Also, it provides data related to weather conditions to its users.
Ticketmaster covers booking concerts, festivals, shows and sporting events throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland and other European countries. In 2016, it released the Commerce API, Discovery API, and Partner API to allow third parties to add the ability to search and book Ticketmaster events to their other services.
