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Hotel booking engine

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  • 16-10-2014 6:03pm
    #1
    veganrun
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,137 ✭✭✭


    I'm working on an app and I am considering adding some sort of hotel booking/listing functionality into it. Basically when the user picks a date and location, part of the information the app will return is a list of hotels in the area, and possibly availability on that date. However initially, I'd just like it to return a list of hotels for the location.

    I'm not sure how to get a list of hotels based on location etc. I guess I could try querying something like Expedia or some hotel booking website and grab the results from that and display it in my app, but I'm guessing the companies in question may not be happy about that form of crawling on their websites.

    Is there a good way to go about this?

    Thanks.


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    #2
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Join the affiliate program for one of the hotel aggregators, they'll give you access to everything you need via an API and you'll get a commission on every booking.


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    #3
    Talisman
    Registered Users Posts: 6,035 ✭✭✭Talisman


    Is the app supposed to work internationally or is it focused on Ireland? Getting access to hotel booking engines costs €€€€.

    If the app is focused on Ireland then I would suggest scraping the DiscoverIreland.ie website. Failte Ireland have the Geo data for all hotels etc on their site.

    You can also harness the power of Google's Search API to get the data and build your own database.


  • Options
    #4
    Graham
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Talisman wrote: »
    Is the app supposed to work internationally or is it focused on Ireland? Getting access to hotel booking engines costs €€€€.

    If the app is focused on Ireland then I would suggest scraping the DiscoverIreland.ie website. Failte Ireland have the Geo data for all hotels etc on their site.

    You can also harness the power of Google's Search API to get the data and build your own database.

    OP is looking to offer hotel bookings on his website, which of the booking engines charges for that?

    I've never come across a charge being levied by any of the aggregators.

    Scraping will only allow the OP to display hotel details (no booking facilities). Signing up with an aggregator will allow the OP to access hotel details, photographs and make bookings/earn commission. The other benefit to using an aggregator is the OP will be displaying licensed content rather than just ripping off hotel details from someone else.

    The OP mentioned Expedia, here's the Expedia affiliate program: http://www.expediaaffiliate.com/index.php and details for their developer API http://developer.ean.com. There are plenty of alternatives too.


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