Hotel APIs

[TimL85]

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I'm after some decent hotel provider APIs to use.......

Not really interested in IAN due to the lack of support etc.

Any recommendations?

[d33man]

I've been interested in IAN - what have you found about their support?

Superbreak do a white Label... not quite the same I know... interested as well to see what's out there!

[trevHCS]

Depends exactly what you're after, but some that do XML feeds and availability are:

- Superbreak
- Active Hotels
- Laterooms
- Alpharooms
- Venere

I think there are others, but a lot seem to hide that kindof thing except when you're a much bigger affiliate which is a pain. Eg: IHG (Holiday Inn etc) who I'm sure have one, but can't for the life of me find it and they're with CJ.com so no hope of finding it there.

Trev

[TimL85]

thanks Trev for those! :tup

[jellis]

Hi Tim

Have already spoken to you but just for the forum, yes we do have an API that we can offer our partners.

Thanks to Trev and d33man for pointing Tim in our direction too

Cheers

Jo from Superbreak.

[d33man]

Depends exactly what you're after, but some that do XML feeds and availability are:

- Superbreak
- Active Hotels
- Laterooms
- Alpharooms
- Venere

I think there are others, but a lot seem to hide that kindof thing except when you're a much bigger affiliate which is a pain. Eg: IHG (Holiday Inn etc) who I'm sure have one, but can't for the life of me find it and they're with CJ.com so no hope of finding it there.

Trev

Your sites work fantastically well in aggregating the data - is this difficult? I was looking to do something similar but it seems an extremely techie job

thanks, D

[trevHCS]

Aggregating data - ah, a joy of a job...!

Our sites like UKhotel.com at least start with a base database usually filled from CSV or similar, whereby each entity is effectively separate and doesn't know about the other copies of a hotel that might exist. That bit is relatively easy once you get around all the quirks, although Superbreak and LR are the best there I'd say for lack of quirks.

To actually aggregate the data - assuming you're not Harry Potter - is a simple process in theory, but it's just very time consuming. I did try to write something automated, but ended up with a custom system that tries to suggest matches based on name, address and other internal data....but the user gets the final yes or no on the match.

It can be fun especially with some suppliers not giving brilliant data. Wouldn't even want to attempt it with IAN (Travelnow)...!

If you decided to do that, well oddly the more suppliers you have in there the easier it can be, but try to pick those who supply decent data like properly formatted addresses - that helps hugely!


Forgot to say - once you've got them matched the actual data collection isn't that hard. Just work out what affiliate a particular entry is linked with (ie: them & their matches), then go ask each one for the XML based on the search criteria. We could do it better on our sites, but just not gotten around to it yet.

As for techie - well if I can do it then anyone should be able to as long as they have a reasonable grap of PHP or similar. I ain't no natural programmer, or the right side of 30.

Trev

[iswise]

Hotel Connect offer XML I think - wish I knew how to use it

[d33man]

Aggregating data - ah, a joy of a job...!
...
As for techie - well if I can do it then anyone should be able to as long as they have a reasonable grap of PHP or similar. I ain't no natural programmer, or the right side of 30.

Trev

Thanks Trev that's a massive help! I'm currently working FT and probably spend a few hours at most a day, usually sourcing and writing content. The challenge on something like this I guess like you say is finding the time. I still need to redesign my site as it was put up in a hurry whilst I concentrated on content then before you know it the site hasn't changed and you don't have time!

Anyway I'm thinking of taking a few days off of work soon to plough through some of the many 'to-do' lists!

[ZacEdward]

HotelsCombined.com offer a comprehensive API.

[tan111]

I usually use it too HotelsCombined.com

[pintofmilk]

We have built a hotel comparison system that aggregates data from 10 merchants and price compares each. Some of the merchants offer good data, clean interfaces and are geared up for working with affiliates. Others are a shambles and should hand their heads in shame!!

Merchants compared are:
- ActiveHotels
- Laterooms
- Octopus
- Superbreak
- GTAhotels
- HotelsFlights (Travelocity)
- Hotel.info
- Xcapewithus
- Alpharooms
- Hotels.com

We have also built an XML interface that can be queried once to fetch prices from all 10 merchants. The interface currently powers our own internal projects including www.TubeHotels.com and www.MATCHhotels.com

We are thinking of opening up the XML interface to other affiliates to save everyone re-inventing the wheel. There isn't much point in us all writing XML price comparison code and trying to match data from multiple sources!!

Drop me a PM if you have a site with decent travel related traffic volume and want to add XML price comparison functionality to it.

Ben

[TimL85]

We have built a hotel comparison system that aggregates data from 10 merchants and price compares each. Some of the merchants offer good data, clean interfaces and are geared up for working with affiliates. Others are a shambles and should hand their heads in shame!!

Nice site Ben. Did you build everything from scratch?

[pintofmilk]

Yep, it took a while!! What site are you building?

[TimL85]

thinking of doing price comparison.

how do you do octopus without an API....is it old/not live data?