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Rapid API: The booking technology your travel business needs
How our customisable, competitive and fully supported API can enhance your end-to-end lodging booking journey.
Choosing technology to expand your travel supply can be complicated, especially when you’re faced with so many options. Different audiences require different lodging options, and that’s why it’s important to choose a solution that adds valuable, high-converting lodging inventory for you and travellers.
At Expedia Group, we’ve used our rich property content, powerful technology and unparalleled travel industry expertise to build Rapid API.
Rapid gives you access to our vast global lodging inventory and innovative technology to help you build the best shopping, booking and post-booking experience for your audience. It also offers differentiated rates that provide value for travellers, and delivers a competitive commission for you.
To understand the full capabilities of Rapid API, we’ve pulled together an overview of why it’s the best booking technology to power your travel business.
What is Rapid API?
Rapid API enables you to distribute Expedia Group’s lodging inventory on your sites, platforms, apps and travel technology.
With Rapid, you have access to over 750,000 properties across 310,000 destinations and more than 35 property types. You also get access to comprehensive property- and room-level descriptions and amenities, as well as competitive, differentiated rates that will drive travellers to book.*
Rapid is quick, light and stable back-end technology that supports the entire traveller experience, from shopping and booking to post-booking. It handles around 12 billion calls every day.** This reliability gives partners a high-performing API that ensures availability, speed and high performance for their website and app.
Diverse businesses find Rapid API beneficial to their operations, from travel inventory aggregators and e-commerce companies to membership organisations. Traditional travel providers, including online travel agents, corporate travel managers, and air, ground and sea suppliers, also embrace the value Rapid API delivers.
‘Rapid API’s inventory provides worldwide coverage with a diverse range of properties. From independent to chain establishments, and from cost-effective options to high-end luxury, we’re able to meet the needs of all our travellers’.
Why Rapid API is the best booking technology for you
Rapid API is the booking technology of choice for leading travel businesses because it’s:
- Customisable to your business;
- Competitive, with differentiated rates to offer better value for travellers;
- Fully supported, with strategic support always available.
1. Customisable to your business
Thanks to a modular structure, Rapid API offers the flexibility to customise your integration so you can power all parts of the traveller journey. You can pick and choose the APIs that are right for your business now and integrate any additional APIs in the future as your needs evolve.
You can:
Surface the right lodging options for travellers and drive traveller confidence to book using Search, Geography and Content APIs;
Offer the best rates and ensure seamless payment using Shopping and Booking APIs;
Support the traveller throughout the lead-up and duration of their trip with Post-Booking APIs.
TAKEAWAY
This adaptability makes Rapid API ideal for hotel-focused businesses, enabling them to personalise options for travellers.
‘Expedia Group’s property content is complete and of the highest quality. Every hotel has detailed descriptions from property and room amenities to photos. We have found that having great content really helps inspire travellers to book’.
2. Competitive
Rapid API gives you access to property rates that travellers won’t be able to find anywhere else. Because of that, you can offer prices that keep your audience coming back for their travel needs, time after time.
Some examples of these rates include:
Package rates that allow you to offer package savings to travellers when they book a flight with a hotel;
Expedia business rates that include business-friendly amenities and greater flexibility around cancellations to address the needs of business travellers;
B2B distribution rates from selected properties that are typically equivalent to standard rates but offer higher margins.
All of these rates are commissionable and competitive, so for every booking, you’re also generating the revenue you need to grow your business.
TAKEAWAY
These rates are designed to give travellers the best value possible—this incentivises them to always book their travel with you.
‘Price and margin are the most important factors when it comes to supply. Rapid’s various rate types—from Package, to Business Rates, to B2B Distribution Rates with higher margins—have helped us achieve substantial growth’.
3. Backed by reliable support
Whether you have deep technical knowledge and resources or not, we’re always here to help with your Rapid API set-up and operation. We’ve got over 25 years of industry experience, so you know you’re partnered with travel experts.
As part of our collaboration, you can get access to a dedicated account manager, focused on helping you grow your business with Rapid API. These account managers are extensions of your team, working as long-term partners to provide you with strategic guidance on new opportunities, including features and rates that can benefit you.
You’ll also have an integration consultant and launch manager to get you up and running quickly and reliably. Once the technology is set up, they’ll continue to suggest new ways to optimise and refine the API’s performance relative to your operations.
And in the unlikely event anything goes wrong, you’ve got always-on partner and travel support channels to resolve any issues. For travellers, this ensures a smooth experience before they leave for a trip and while they travel.
TAKEAWAY
Our comprehensive support makes Rapid API ideal for any partner, giving them the peace of mind that whatever questions they have, we’ll be there to provide answers and guide them through their API integration and management.
‘Expedia Group has a lot more resources and visibility on things that we don’t. We knew that if Expedia Group had access to our business plans and vision for the future, they could anticipate our needs and begin planning for those aspects in ways we might not have envisioned’.
Upgrade your inventory with Rapid API
Learn about Rapid API
See what our flexible and easy-to-integrate booking technology can do for your business.
Visit the Developer Hub
Find out more about the more technical aspects of Rapid API and how it integrates with your operations.
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*Expedia Group internal data, 2022.
**Expedia Group internal data, 2024.