![]() In this case, when you have a query from your customers, you’ll be able to pull this hotel rooms’ description, availability, and rates right from its system. If you want to sell the rooms of a hotel next door, you can pay them a visit, sign a contract, and integrate directly with their property management system (PMS) and channel manager. How and where OTAs source inventory Direct supply and integrations Suppliers, their types, and underlying contracts define revenue management, technology, and a business niche that the agency targets. This is a foundational problem a travel agency must solve to successfully operate. Types of travel inventory and content Where do OTAs get their inventory? Such content is usually stored in the OTA’s database, so instead of requesting it every time a traveler makes a query, agencies either purchase this information separately or pull it via an API and store it for further use. Static travel content, as we said, is the one that doesn’t change often, e.g., descriptions, pictures, seat maps, hotel amenities, and so on. Agencies normally don’t store dynamic content but rather access it in suppliers’ systems via APIs every time a traveler searches for flights or accommodation for their destinations and dates (caching is also an option, but we’ll talk about it later). What are static and dynamic travel content?ĭynamic content is the type that constantly changes, such as availability and rates. This leads us to the major concepts of dynamic and static content. Other types of information, such as hotel room descriptions, photos, and airline logos can be kept internally in the OTA’s database since they don’t change that often. For instance, if you sell flights, current seat availability will be stored in the airline’s reservation system, because this airline distributes flights across many resellers and… well, knows which seats are already booked and which are available. More often than not, travel agency systems act as aggregators and mediators to source travel products and content from supplier reservation systems that act as the source of truth. While the word inventory suggests that travel agencies own these products and store them internally, in reality, it’s not always the case.
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