Integrating a Travel API in PHP - A step-by-step Guide

With the growth of OTAs and search engines in recent years, people at their fingertips expect information when they want it, wherever they want. If you don't have the information people are looking for, they will instantly switch to someone else who does.As more and more people are starting to use the Internet for their travel needs, travel agencies must ensure that they provide their clients with relevant content to meet their needs. The range of that content is not that important if you are a very small start-up or agency handling a handful of clients or if you operate in a very small region. Today we will be introducing the best travel system, the Travel API Integration in PHP.

What is the travel APIs?

Travel API integrations allow travel portal development companies to automate tasks, integrating their programs and databases with current industry applications to ensure fluid and continuous communication between various applications, This benefits workers, since they can access multiple cloud-based applications while enhancing product innovation. Travel APIs allow companies to launch innovative initiatives in an agile and efficient way and without spending a lot of time and money.In simple terms, a Travel API allows you to integrate 3rd party GDS / Wholesale inventory / feeds into the travel booking engine on your site. Therefore, when a customer searches to book a flight or hotel on your site, they will not be redirected to another site and the payment will be collected by you.

Banks and other payment processors also provide APIs to use their services just as vendors provide Travel API Integration to give you access to their feeds. By integrating the API of a payment gateway, your customers will be able to make secure payments online using their credit cards. Now one of the ways you can sell global inventory on your Travel Website Designers is by integrating the API of an OTA. In the case of a Travel API Integration, the customer is redirected to the site of the API Integration provider and you earn a small commission when the user makes a reservation on your site.Many vendors also provide frame code that can be embedded into your website, in which case the customer stays on your site, but the vendor keeps getting paid and you get the commission. In both cases, you have no control over the travel app api booking engine or the payment. You must accept vendor-provided rates and cannot set margins or offer discounts based on region and customer/agent type. Also, if there are discrepancies in fees, you should raise the issue with the provider, which could take time to resolve.

Advantages of travel APIs

• For your agents/end customers, you can add a margin
• The payment directly from the clients, it is you who will receive
• Returned from XML pages provide a highly dynamic information
• Tasks like marketing and package creation less content maintenance that lets you focus on your core

Requirements to obtain travel API

These travel api for developers provider often require a security deposit against which you can make reservations. Once your deposit with the providers is exhausted, you must update your balance to continue making reservations.The deposit can vary from provider to provider and can also depend on the number of reservations you make. Also, vendors expect you to maintain a certain booking search ratio, and you don't achieve that booking search ratio for a period of time, you may have to incur some charges. The read per reservation ratio refers to the number of reservations made based on the number of searches. Most providers allow a look-to-book ratio of up to 400: 1

The biggest difference between API and White Labels is that in the case of API, agents get net fees from vendors and can add their own margins when selling to their agents/clients. Good travel agency software allows agents to set separate margins for their B2C clients and B2B agents.Providers often offer a discount on net fees to agents who exceed a certain amount of bookings per month/quarter/year. It varies from one provider to another. Therefore, Travel API Integration in PHP provides agents with a much greater reach to maximize their earning potential, compared to white labels.

Steps involved in API integration in PHP

• Vendor selection

When choosing a provider, do your research carefully to make sure you choose the provider that is best for your business, based on your region, rates, availability, requirements, etc.The provider may have better rates and a wider range of hotels in your region than the Provider, so you should check their rates and availability beforehand. Also, not all providers offer multiple modules in their travel portal development and api e.g. Flights, hotels, activities, etc.So the choice of provider also depends on what segments they provide in their APIs. So if you want to sell flights, hotels, and cars, you need to select a vendor that provides all three or integrates multiple vendors.

• The signing of the contract documentation and API

After you have selected the vendors you want to contract with, you must sign an API contract with them. As mentioned in the previous point, a provider can provide multiple APIs for different modules. As mentioned above, you will also need to pay a deposit.Once the contract has been signed and payment has been made, the provider will send you and your travel portal development company provider.

• API document evaluation and development

Your technology partner will study the API and its technical feasibility concerning your travel booking engine API upon receipt of the API documentation. This helps them decide if the API Integration is ready to deploy or if they will have to make changes to their PHP connector or even create a completely new connector for it.At Adivaha, we have integrated APIs from more than 50 providers around the world in more than 10 years in the industry. Since we have already integrated so many providers, it doesn't take us more than a week to integrate the API in PHP into the customer's system. If the travel API integration is new, it may take around 3 weeks to develop the PHP connector.

• Certification and integration

Once the connector is ready by travel portal development company, it will need to be certified by the supplier to ensure it meets the supplier's standards. For existing connections, hotel providers typically take around a week to complete certification, while for newly developed connectors it can take around two weeks. GDSs generally have long certification queues and can take a few weeks, so be patient.Once the certification is complete, the provider will provide you with the credentials to access their live broadcasts, which can be used to make reservations. adivaha® team is experienced in aggregating feeds from multiple providers into a single booking engine, giving you and your clients a single interface to access all third-party inventories, rather than dragging across multiple screens.

Conclusion:

At Adivaha, we update metadata every 3 months to ensure your inventory is up to date. We also provide hotel-level mapping and inventory reduplication to ensure you are selling unique properties to your clients.So this covers pretty much everything you need to know about Travel API Integration India in PHP. Please mention them in the comment section below if you have any questions. This post we hope has been useful to you. Subscribe to our blog to get travel tech tips and guides delivered straight to your inbox.