Knowledge base
Everything you wanted to know about travel technology.
Straight, factual answers to the questions buyers ask us most — flight APIs, hotel APIs, booking engines, B2B portals, white-label, SaaS, XML integrations, consolidator ticketing and Umrah systems. Last updated May 2026.
1. Flight APIs
GDS, NDC, LCC and aggregator-based flight booking APIs — what they are, how they differ, and what to integrate.
What is a flight API?
A flight API is a programmatic interface that lets a travel website, OTA, agency back-office or mobile app search for flights, retrieve fares, book tickets and manage post-booking changes (re-issues, cancellations, refunds) through HTTP requests. Behind a single API your traffic can reach GDS content (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport), direct NDC carrier connections, low-cost carrier (LCC) APIs and aggregator inventory — without negotiating each contract yourself.
What is the difference between a GDS API and an NDC API?
A GDS (Global Distribution System) API distributes airline content through legacy Edifact/SOAP messages aggregated by Amadeus, Sabre or Travelport. An NDC (New Distribution Capability) API is a modern XML/JSON standard from IATA that lets carriers distribute richer content — ancillaries, branded fares, personalized offers — directly to sellers. Reservationhub exposes both behind one normalized REST contract, so your application code does not change when you switch sources.
Which airlines are connected through the Reservationhub flight API?
Reservationhub aggregates 100+ airline carriers through GDS (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport), direct NDC connections with major full-service carriers, and LCC APIs for low-cost airlines including airAsia, Flydubai, Indigo, SpiceJet and others. The list is continuously expanded; the partners page lists active connections.
Can a flight API issue and re-issue tickets?
Yes. The Reservationhub flight API supports the full booking lifecycle — search, price, hold, book, ticket issuance, re-issue/exchange, void and refund — across GDS, NDC and direct carrier connections.
How long does flight API integration take?
A typical sandbox integration is live in 1–2 hours. Production certification (including carrier-specific tests, fraud rules and your ticketing arrangement) ranges from 1 to 4 weeks depending on whether you are using your own ARC/IATA accreditation or our consolidator arrangement.
2. Hotel APIs
Hotel content, rates, availability and booking APIs from major bedbanks and direct chains.
What is a hotel booking API?
A hotel booking API exposes search, availability, rate and booking endpoints for hotel inventory. It normalizes data from multiple suppliers — bedbanks (Hotelbeds, TBO, GTA), Expedia TAAP/EPS, Agoda Affiliate, direct chain APIs (Marriott, Hilton, Accor) and metasearch feeds — into a single contract your application can consume.
How many hotels are available through Reservationhub?
2,000,000+ hotel properties across 200+ countries through a combination of Hotelbeds, Expedia EPS/TAAP, TBO, Agoda Affiliate and direct chain integrations. Static content (descriptions, images, geo, amenities) is updated nightly; rates and availability are fetched live for every search.
Does the hotel API support multi-room and multi-occupancy searches?
Yes. The /hotels/search endpoint accepts arrays of rooms with per-room adult and child paxes, child ages, and supports up to 9 rooms per search across all major suppliers.
Can I get net rates and add my own markup?
Yes. Reservationhub returns supplier net rates and lets you apply a programmatic markup engine (flat, percentage, tiered, supplier-specific, market-specific, agent-specific). Markup is applied server-side before the rate is exposed to your end user.
How is hotel cancellation handled through the API?
Each rate returns a cancellation policy with date-bracketed penalties. The /bookings/{id}/cancel endpoint executes the cancellation against the supplier and returns the refund breakdown. Webhook events fire on any supplier-side modification.
3. Travel Booking Engine
The booking engine is the orchestration layer that turns supplier APIs into a usable sales experience.
What is a travel booking engine?
A travel booking engine is the application layer that searches multiple suppliers in parallel, applies business rules (markup, commission, fee, tax, currency conversion), assembles a unified shopping cart across products (flights + hotels + transfers + activities), takes payment, generates tickets/vouchers and writes a booking record. Reservationhub ships a complete booking engine that powers our SaaS, source-code edition and white-label deployments.
Can the booking engine sell multiple products in one cart?
Yes. The Reservationhub unified cart supports any combination of the 9 travel modules — flights, hotels, transfers, activities, car rental, cruises, holiday packages, visa, Umrah — in a single transaction with one payment.
Does the booking engine support multi-currency and multi-language?
Yes. 70+ currencies with live FX rates, 25+ languages including English, Arabic, Bahasa, Urdu, Bengali, Tagalog and Mandarin. Languages and currencies can be set per market or per agent.
Is the booking engine mobile-responsive?
Yes. The front-end is built mobile-first with Core Web Vitals targets in mind (LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1) and ships as a fully responsive web app with optional native wrappers for iOS and Android.
4. B2B Travel Portal
How agency-to-agency distribution works, what a sub-agent hierarchy looks like, and what controls you get.
What is a B2B travel portal?
A B2B travel portal is a dedicated branded interface for travel agents, sub-agents and corporate buyers to search, book and pay for travel inventory on credit, deposit or wallet terms. Unlike a B2C site, a B2B portal supports agent hierarchies, per-agent markup, credit limits, commission tracking, statement generation and white-label resellers.
Can I have multi-level sub-agents?
Yes. Reservationhub supports unlimited agent hierarchies (head agent → sub-agent → sub-sub-agent). Each level inherits credit, markup and product permissions from its parent, with full override controls.
How are credit limits and wallets handled?
Each agent has a configurable credit limit and a deposit wallet. Every booking checks both balances atomically before confirming. The accounting module reconciles top-ups, refunds, commission and supplier invoices automatically.
Can each agent have their own branding?
Yes — at the white-label tier. Sub-agents can have their own subdomain, logo, color theme, contact details and email templates while continuing to consume the same back-end inventory and rules.
5. White-Label Solutions
When white-label makes sense, what you can and cannot brand, and what the costs look like.
What is a white-label travel platform?
A white-label travel platform lets you launch a fully-branded travel business — your domain, your logo, your colors, your terms — on top of a vendor-operated booking engine and supplier network. You focus on marketing and customer acquisition; the vendor handles the technology, integrations, infrastructure and supplier relationships.
How is Reservationhub white-label different from a SaaS subscription?
A SaaS subscription gives you a tenant on a shared platform with limited branding. White-label gives you a fully isolated brand experience — custom domain, complete theming, your own email/notification sender identity, your own payment gateway — while still benefiting from the vendor running the platform.
Can I white-label the mobile apps too?
Yes. The iOS and Android apps can be released under your own developer account and store listing, themed with your branding, and connected to your white-label backend instance.
Do I own the customer data?
Yes. With Reservationhub white-label and source-code editions, the customer database is yours and is exportable at any time. Data residency can be configured to your jurisdiction (UAE, EU, Singapore, India, US).
6. Travel SaaS Platform
How hosted, multi-tenant travel SaaS works — pricing, updates, security and where it fits.
What is a travel SaaS platform?
A travel SaaS (Software as a Service) platform is a cloud-hosted, multi-tenant booking engine that you subscribe to on a monthly or annual basis. The vendor runs the servers, applies updates and security patches, maintains supplier connections and provides support. You configure your business, market and branding through an admin console.
How much does a travel SaaS cost?
Reservationhub SaaS starts at USD 18/month for entry-level agencies. Mid-market plans range from USD 99 to USD 499/month. Enterprise tiers are priced based on transaction volume and modules in use. All plans include hosting, updates, security and access to the 110+ pre-built supplier integrations.
Is SaaS data secure?
Yes. The platform runs on PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant infrastructure, with TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, tenant-isolated databases, daily encrypted backups, audit logging and role-based access control. SOC 2 Type II reporting is available on enterprise plans.
When should I choose SaaS over source code?
Choose SaaS when you want to focus on selling rather than running infrastructure, you accept multi-tenant architecture and standard customization, and you value monthly OpEx over a one-time licence. Choose source code when you need full control of the stack, custom modifications, data residency in your jurisdiction, or a perpetual licence model.
7. XML / API Integrations
Connecting third-party suppliers, payment gateways, accounting systems and CRM tools.
What XML/API integrations are pre-built?
110+ pre-built integrations across flight (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport, NDC carriers, LCCs), hotel (Hotelbeds, EPS, Agoda, TBO), car rental (Hertz, Avis, Sixt), transfers (Hotelbeds, Holiday Taxis), activities (Viator, GetYourGuide, Tiqets), payment gateways (Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, PayTabs, Telr, Razorpay), CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce), accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage) and messaging (WhatsApp Business, Twilio, SendGrid).
Can I add a new supplier that is not pre-integrated?
Yes. Reservationhub ships a Supplier SDK that lets your developers or our team add a new XML or REST supplier in 2–4 weeks. Once written, the new supplier plugs into the same normalized search/book contract as the pre-built ones.
Is the API REST or SOAP/XML?
The Reservationhub public API is REST/JSON. Internally we translate to/from XML, SOAP and Edifact for legacy suppliers, so your developers only work with modern JSON contracts. Webhooks are emitted for asynchronous events (booking changes, supplier modifications, payment captures).
Are webhooks signed?
Yes. Every webhook delivery includes an HMAC-SHA256 signature header so your server can verify authenticity before processing.
8. Airline Consolidator Systems
For agencies without their own IATA — how consolidator access works, and what the workflow looks like.
What is an airline consolidator?
An airline consolidator is an IATA-accredited agency that aggregates ticket-issuance rights for non-accredited sub-agents. The sub-agent searches and books on behalf of customers; the consolidator issues the actual ticket and remits funds to airlines. Consolidator access lets a new agency sell tickets without going through the full IATA/BSP accreditation process.
Does Reservationhub provide consolidator ticketing?
Reservationhub partners with multiple IATA-accredited consolidators across UAE, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We can introduce you to a consolidator suited to your route mix, or integrate your own consolidator into the platform. The choice is yours.
What is the markup structure under a consolidator model?
Typically the consolidator earns 0.5–1.5% of fare value, the airline pays a published or negotiated commission, and the sub-agent earns their own markup. The Reservationhub finance engine tracks all three legs automatically so reconciliation at month-end is one click.
Can I sell airline tickets in multiple countries through one platform?
Yes. The platform supports multi-currency, multi-tax-jurisdiction and multi-consolidator setups in a single instance — so an agency in Dubai can sell to customers in Riyadh, Karachi, Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur with the correct currency, tax and ticketing source applied per market.
9. Umrah & Travel Technology Solutions
Hajj/Umrah is a category of its own. Here is how a purpose-built Umrah system differs from generic travel software.
What is an Umrah booking system?
An Umrah booking system is travel software purpose-built for Hajj and Umrah operators. It bundles visa, flight, Makkah and Madinah hotels, ground transportation and ziyarah tours into a single quotable package, supports group bookings (typical Umrah groups are 25–250 passengers), handles Nusuk visa workflow, and complies with the Saudi MOFA and Tawakkalna requirements.
Does the platform handle group Umrah bookings?
Yes. The Umrah module supports group quotation, group manifest management (passport, photo, Mahram relationship), group payment splits, room assignment for Makkah/Madinah hotels and group transport. PNR splitting and re-issuance for groups is built into the flight module.
Can I integrate with Nusuk and Saudi visa systems?
Yes. The platform exposes connectors for Nusuk visa submission and tracking, with status webhooks. For markets with local agents (e.g. UAE, Pakistan, Malaysia) we also support manual visa workflow with document collection and digital approval.
Which Umrah markets does Reservationhub support?
Active Umrah deployments cover the UAE, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Turkey, the UK and Nigeria — with local payment gateways, languages and visa workflows.