Web Service Implementation

Web Service Implementation

In 2017, TripAdvisor and Comscore reported that travelers would book an average of 10 to 34 visits to reserve their trips. Although such statistics for hotel reservations seem high, travelers prefer to make their reservations through an "all in one place" system. These platforms have created a single and simple user experience for users. That is why the tourism industry welcomes the sharing of services and data, and these connections are always growing. In technology terms, this connection is synonymous with the growing API or web service. The API, or web service, is like a management panel for developers to connect their various software components without changing the source code. In other words, web service is a part of a web-based software that can communicate with other software and respond to users' activities and requests through software interface. An OTA can sell flight, hotel and other tourism services online on its site after implementing a web service.

The data source bridge between of online travel agencies (OTA) and service providers are Global Distribution Systems (GDS). A GDS collects and integrates travel information from a wide range of service providers, allowing agents to book airline seats, rent a car, book a hotel room, and more. With GDS, a travel agency does not need to connect directly with hundreds of airlines, millions hotels and etc. There are also companies in the tourism industry that have created an API of integrating different APIs to facilitate the support and reduce the costs of travel agencies. They are called aggregator web-services.

GDSs focus on five types of services in the tourism industry:

• Flight seats
• Hotel rooms
• Rent a car
• Ships
• Train

There are three major GDSs in the tourism market: Amadeus, Saber and Travelport. These three cases cover 99.9% of the GDS market share.

Implementation of travel/tourism industry (web services) APIs by Basis Fly

At Basisfly, we have implemented many of the most popular web services in the travel/tourism industry for our clients. We have integrated the data from different web services. For example, the BasisFly booking platform have displays the information of a hotel in unique form with specific settings (mapping) which can be accessible from various web services.