buy.at Travel API's overview

[SimonQuick]

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As well as running product feeds for our Travel merchants, buy.at also provide access to XML API’s for selected merchants which allow real time queries to run against the merchants database, giving the most up to date and accurate pricing and availability data.

Our API relays are based on the REST protocol which makes them simple to integrate into your web application as all queries are made from a URL populated with the search parameters your visitors stipulate. The query will return a batch of XML which you simply parse into your web page and display the corresponding results. We also pre-append all returned hotel URL’s with your affiliate handle and relative tracking information.

In most cases, all you will need to implement is

• A query form for the user to enter their search parameters. For example: destination and arrival/departure date.
• A function to read in the form contents and build the URL to query the merchant’s database.
• A function to parse, format and display the XML that is returned.

The majority of the data returned includes hi-resolution images, extensive descriptions and the geo-positional data for each hotel, meaning integration with the excellent Google Maps API is possible. We encourage you to be as creative as possible with your applications through the mash up

We provide full documentation for each API which details all the available search parameters to ensure you have the knowledge to make your queries as accurate as possible. We can also provide you with a document which will guide you through the parsing of XML.

buy.at currently have API’s for the following travel merchants:

Expedia
Hotels.com
LateRooms
Premier Inn

If you wish to apply for access to the API’s, please contact the relevant account manager for each programme.

Expedia – rebecca.riches@buy.at
Hotels.com – peter.armstrong@buy.at
LateRooms – anita.chen@digitalwindow.com
Premier Inn – nicola.white@buy.at

If you have any questions then feel free to get in touch.

Thanks
Simon

[buyat]

Adding on to this, if you would like to read the full API launch details, you can view the a4u post here.