The use of Shop API, Availability, and Livecheck APIs are designed to apply to different user scenarios.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Scenario A (Shop API):

A customer starts a query. Your booking engine needs to display all the available accommodation options that are in match with the searching criteria. 


Recommendation:

You will make the query to Shop API and the available hotels with the product offers will be returned in the response. The product offers availability comes from DerbySoft cache. 


The API supports searches of multiple hotels from multiple suppliers. This high-performance API allows return of search results in milliseconds which guarantees a seamless searching experience.  


Scenario B (Availability API):

A customer selects a property to look at the offer details. At this step your booking engine needs to display the searching results closest to reality. 


Recommendation:

You will make the query to Availability API and the available hotels with product offers will be returned in the response. The product offers availability comes from hotel CRS system.  


The API allows the searching for availability for a selected property from a specific hotel supplier. 


Scenario C (Shop API):

A customer confirms the selection of a hotel offer and is ready for purchase as the next step. Your booking engine needs to display the real-time availability of this offer by querying the hotel CRS again. This steps ensures the offer is still available when the customer makes the purchase to avoid any missed-out opportunities. 


Recommendation: 

You will make the availability query to Livecheck API and send the criteria (room ids, rate ids, room count, adult count, child count, check-in date, check-out date) to hotel CRS system, and get availability response.  When the offer is available, you can redirect your customer to the checkout page where the final booking details will be entered. When the offer is not available (and it happens sometimes when the room is sold out fast), you can redirect your customer to the room offer details page where they can re-select the offer.