apidays New York 2025 - The Evolution of Travel APIs by Eric White (Eviivo)

From Rates and Bookings to AI Intelligence: The Evolution of Travel APIs
Eric White, CTO at Eviivo

apidays New York 2025
API Management for Surfing the Next Innovation Waves: GenAI and Open Banking
May 14 & 15, 2025

------

Check out our conferences at https://www.apidays.global/

Do you want to sponsor or talk at one of our conferences?
https://apidays.typeform.com/to/ILJeAaV8

Learn more on APIscene, the global media made by the community for the community:
https://www.apiscene.io

Explore the API ecosystem with the API Landscape:
https://apilandscape.apiscene.io/

Transcript

1. The Evolution of Travel APIs From Rates and Bookings to AI Intelligence:
2. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Hotels and Vacation Rentals 2 Automate, Simplify, Grow
3. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Managing Guests. Growing the Business 3 • What room or villa is the guest going to stay in? • How did the guest pay? • When and how will I get paid? • Who’s arriving, and when? • How do I send the guest their check-in instructions? • Has the guest secured the required damage deposit? • Is the room or rental clean and ready for check-in? • Has the guest booked any extras? • Do I have the right level of automation in place? • How can I expand my hotel or rental portfolio efficiently? • How do I get new VR listings live quickly on travel sites? • Are my prices competitive for this market? • What does my revenue forecast look like for the next 30, 60, or 90 days? • Should I adjust my restrictions to boost occupancy or revenue?
4. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 API Timeline 4 Founded Mid 90s Expedia, Booking.com, Priceline, Vrbo 2015 The Launch of Automated Onboarding 2018 Guest Messaging, API Expansion GDS 2025+ AI 2000s “standardization” of pricing and booking APIs
5. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 5
6. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Low tech to High tech 6 PMS/CM PMS/CM PMS/CM Combined Hotels and Vacation Rentals 10s of million bookable units Agency 1 Agency 2 Agency 3 Boutique 20-40 APIs Per Agency * Asynchronous * Webhooks * XML/SOAP/JSON/GRPC … … …
7. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 What is the property making available for sale? 7 • Inventory Details: • Day by day availability for a given type of room or unit • Eventually consistent • PMS Channel Manager is the source of truth for the available inventory. • This system knows how many ACTUAL rooms are available in the property • E.g. where do you sleep • Pushes to the travel agencies a feed of available sellable units Available King Suite: Room 101 King Suite: 4 units available Inv Agency 1 Inv Agency 2 Frontend cache Update Inventory Backend store Booked
8. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 What does the property see when you book? 8 • Reservation Details: • Guest: Name, email, phone, nights, Adults, Children • Reservation: Number, Check-in date, nights, • Payment: Credit Card, Prepaid, Pay later • Travel site branded site or affiliate • Importantly the room is allocated for the guest • The reservations are queued on the travel sites systems then • The PMS Channel manager either: • Polls • Hinted via a webhook of a reservation • Or notified directly Eric White 323428104 May 19th 2025 Two Nights King Suite: Allocate Room 200 Eric White 323428104 May 19th 2025 Two Nights Resv Agency 1 Resv Frontend service Update Inventory Backend store Real time inventory check
9. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 How do I set my price? 9 • Pricing Details: • Day by day prices for up to 2 years • Minimum maximum length of stay • Closed to arrival, closed to departure • Policies: Cancellation, Deposit terms • Board basis • Promotional rules or prices • Billions of prices • 10 million * 365 days = 3.6 Billion prices • Then exploded that out by variants of the above • PMS Channel Manager is the source of pricing $200 King Suite: $250 per night Old Price King Suite: $250 per night Price Agency 1 Price Agency 2 Frontend cache $250 New Price Update rate Backend store
10. 10 Those are the basics
11. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Agency 2 Expanding my hotel or rental portfolio efficiently 11 • The PMS is the source of truth for: • Descriptions, photos • Amenities, facilities, services • Policies, house rules • Guest charges: Linen, Cleaning fees, Damage deposits • Configuration of rooms or living spaces • API coverage varies immensely by travel site, but all the travel sites support some way to create • Properties • Rooms or Listings • Prices with policies • More recently you can now manage contracting requirements between the property and the travel site • Adding a property to an existing portfolio • Initiate a contractual flow for a new portfolio PMS Agency 1 10s of APIs Per Agency generally synchronous Content Automation Audience targeted content Automatic Translations Image curation
12. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Unified Inbox for Guest Messaging 12 • Bi-directional guest messaging • Including attachments • Initiated by either guest or PMS • Sent / read notifications • Communication channels • Travel agencies • SMS / WhatsApp • Fully Automated • Check-in instructions • Door codes (hardware linked) • Upselling extras • Manual • Clarifications or inquires • Very API intensive as approaches vary significantly per communication channel Hi, we’re looking forward to our stay Message Message Great! You’ll be staying in the Oak Tree Cottage Conversation Automation Pre reservation Post reservation
13. Strictly Confidential – © eviivo 2025 Model Context Protocol (MCP) 13 “Which guests are due to check-in today whose total reservation cost is greater than $5,000 so that I can greet them personally. Please provide me their reservation details in a google doc” MCP Client PMS MCP Server ISV API Internal API Google Docs MCP LLM OpenAI/Claude