We all agree that without internet it would be impossible to imagine a tourism industry like the present one. With the emergence of the network of networks and new technologies, the work tourist agents do has been made so much simpler, but it has also been perfected, and business niches hitherto unthinkable have appeared.
But this ‘magic’ is not just due to the existence of the internet. There is a secret ingredient, and that ingredient is what really makes this new medium a pillar of the tourism industry. We are talking about digital connections (also known as integrations). They make all the information highways work perfectly, without sinkholes, without jams, without interruptions.
At TravelgateX we like to say that digital connections or integrations are the technical translators of the travel sector, the parts, the adapters that make two completely different systems work together perfectly. Yes, exactly: as if it were the Tinder of tourism industries.
These digital connections work with XML language, which in simplified terms is something like a universal language on the technological scene, a code that can be shared and understood by all and that also travels on the highways of internet at high speed.
If these digital connections did not exist, it would be impossible for client X – who has a technological solution that allows him to manage all the information on his online sales platform – and a supplier – who has a completely different solution where she keeps information on all her stock – to work together and benefit mutually.
If we take the Hotel-X connection model as a reference, we start from the basis that this is a much more ambitious functionality than what was available earlier: instead of connecting a customer with a supplier, what Hotel-X does is connect that customer with more than 600 suppliers worldwide.
The operation is simpler than it might seem, a priori. For example, a customer sends a request to Hotel-X (room category suites at destination X with availability on dates X and All-Inclusive Plan) and it returns this information in a matter of seconds, collected from different suppliers. This allows customers to analyse and choose from a much wider portfolio of products and configure the offers to suit them perfectly. But Hotel-X’s connectivity goes a bit further than that: if there is a request that the provider cannot respond to, the system fills that gap, searches for the information and offers it. For example, if a customer requests room category suites at hotel chain X, organised by destination, and the supplier does not have their information ordered in this way, Hotel-X analyses the supplier’s inventory and orders it just like the client requested: by destination.
The travel sector is one of the most advanced in this regard and XML integrations have become an indispensable element, especially for companies that seek to grow in their business, diversify their niche markets and specialise their products to the fullest.
This is the case of the TravelgateX API – based on GraphQI, a technology that is not often used in the travel sector – that has completely changed the way of understanding and facing challenges in the current tourism market, increasing sales and making them a lot simpler.
We have managed to create a fully flexible API with an immediate, precise and simple response capable of bringing all the agents in the sector together in a marketplace where there are currently more than 20,000 bookings per day and 3,000 million daily searches. Its differential factor is implementation to connect all kinds of tourist services, from flights to hotels, events, car rentals, and excursions.
It might sound startling, talking about an API that allows universal connections and then says that it is fully customisable, but in the case of TravelgateX it is a pure truth: behind all the operations managed by the platform there is a team of highly qualified people who can attend to any requirement or technical request from its partners.
They have also made a documentation centre available to everyone that can be consulted on the internet, completely free of charge.