apidays New York 2025 - Breaking Barriers: Lessons Learned from API Integration with Large Hotel Chains and the Role of Standardization

Constantine Nikolaou - Solutions Architect | May 2025
Breaking Barriers:
Lessons Learned from API integrations
with large Hotel Chains

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I’m Constantine Nikolaou.
Professional background in Software
Development, Startups, Scale-ups and currently
working for one of the largest OTAs in the world.
Netherlands is home since 2018.
Husband. Father to a 3.5 year old daughter.
Joined Booking.com in November 2019 as a
Solutions Architect, a few weeks before the
world halted for covid.
About me
Agnes Monkelbaan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Booking.com Presentation name
“Make it easier
for everyone to
experience the
world
Booking.com Mission Statement

I work in Connectivity for
Professional Services—bridging
hospitality tech companies, tech
teams, and travelers.
It is about making connections
simpler—not just for technology,
but also for people.
My role at Booking.com
Photo taken from the Booking.com Amsterdam office, Constantine N. - April 2025

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8
Story time
Family Travel
How we tried to make it easier for
families with children to book
rooms on Booking.com
Hotel
Onboarding
Last Available
Room
How we tried to speed up the
process of onboarding between a
Global Hotel Chains and
Booking.com
How we convinced Global Hotel
Chains to give us the Last
Available Room
I would like to share 3 stories with you about my experience working with 3 of the largest
Global Hotel Chains.

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a Global Hotel Chains intro
But ﬁrst…

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Global Hotel Chains: deﬁnition
A group of hotels operating under the same
brand that follows a standardized business
model, IT systems, processes and share the
following key characteristics:
1. Standardization
2. Centralized Management
3. Brand Consistency
4. Global Footprint
5. Ownership Models
The Chain HQ often acts as a centralised
service organisation to support the hotels.
Source: https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/hotel-groups-chains-brands/

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Integrating diverse technology stacks (10+
PMSs per chain, legacy CRS, regulatory and
location restrictions)
Achieving cross-functional alignment, as
integration touches product, ops, IT, revenue,
legal, and compliance on both sides
Navigating legacy infrastructure and technical
debt, where a minor API change can have broad,
unpredictable operational impacts
Empowering and supporting Chains to try new
approaches (e.g. offering new room types, rate
structures, bundled rates etc …)
Delivering real-time, robust integrations that
directly impact overbooking, accuracy of data
and the guest experience
Unlocking access to new market segments (e.g.
family and group travelers, underserved regions)
There are challenges and opportunities
How is it like to work
with Chains on
Connectivity?
..and solving at scale

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Skift, "The World’s Largest Hotel Chains," March 2024
Global Hotel Chains: World’s largest by number of rooms

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High-level Typical Workﬂow between Hotel & OTA
Hotel B
Provider A
Provider B
Hotels
Channel
Manager
CRS
CMS
PMS
B
Global Hotel Chain Connectivity Providers OTAs
Booking.com
OTA 2
OTA 3
PMS
C
PMS
A
Hotel A
Hotel C
Inventory
Content

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01
Story #1
How we tried to make it easier for
families with children to book rooms
on Booking.com
Family Travel

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1. Families are a high-value audience.
2. On average, families tend to spend more than
solo travelers or couples.
3. Families have the second-longest stays,
making them a very important customer
segment.
“Family travel is 40% of US leisure market” (Skift)
Multi-generational travel is on the rise, with 31% of
surveyed travelers showing interest in trips that include
parents, grandparents, and children, and 46% of family
travel now involving multiple generations (Skift -
October 2024) Source: Skift - U.S. Travel Trends Q2 2024: Insights into Family Travel. N = 1,021
Why families are important?

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Searching for a family stay
Search results without optimised inventory Search results with optimised inventory
Same chain hotel in Madrid, Spain Different chain hotel in Paris, France

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1. We looked at the data on Booking.com
2. We identiﬁed 5 gaps
3. We initiated conversations with Chains
4. We received feedback and learned
5. We offered advice, support and guidance
What did we do?
Occupancy does not cover all beds
Findings: 5 Occupancy Gaps
Non-optimal occupancy settings
Child rates do not cover all children
Flexible child rates do not cover all rooms
and rate plans
Infant occupancy is not utilised nor
classiﬁed
1
2
3
4
5

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What does a Connectivity solution look like?
Current Connectivity Usage Proposed Connectivity Usage
To Fix Occupancy
To Fix Bed Set Up
For Chains that are connected to Booking.com and are using OTA_HotelInvNotif API endpoint (part of RRM API), changes were easy to make
and push to Booking.com.
For Chains that are not connected to Booking.com via API, the global operations team is processing the updates manually.
To Add Payable
Children

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Impact
Ongoing initiative.
Global Hotel Chains that have the API
implemented, are making changes themselves,
from their own systems.
Most importantly, eliminate booking barriers so
families can seamlessly reserve rooms that ﬁt
their needs perfectly.
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02
Story #2
How we tried to speed up the
process of onboarding between a
Global Hotel Chains and
Booking.com
Hotel Onboarding

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1. Average time to onboard a new hotel to
Booking.com can range from a few days to up to 2
weeks. Delay mean loss of business.
2. Manual and multi-step process: property
registration, verification of details, property setup,
and final approvals.
3. Process relies on exchange of information using
spreadsheets according to predefined SLOs.
Better onboarding experience at Beds24 resulted in 40% decrease of properties with 0 bookings - Beds24
After completing Seamless Experience Accelerator
(SEA) and modular API implementation, reported that
50–60% of their properties now onboard in as little as 1
day (previously “could take anywhere from 3 days to 2
months”) - STAAH
Why property onboarding is important?

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How the Connectivity
solution used to look like?
An API with a single interface covering multiple use cases.
The API is OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif.
The API did not cover all onboarding use-cases, properties still
needed to contact the Booking team in advance for manual steps
before being able to connect and become Open Bookable.
The API used an overlay concept every time an update is made.
Needless to say, this API was not useful nor attractive to our
partners. Most importantly, Global Hotel Chains cannot use it.
Example snippet from the OTA_HotelDescriptiveContentNotif API
payload

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Around 2 years ago, we set ourselves up to modernize our
APIs, starting with onboarding and driven by the increasing
demand for automation from the Home segment.
What did we do?
To support the modernization efforts, the Professional Services team tailored an intensive workshop with partners that aims to accelerate
the efforts to adopt the newly developed modularised APIs.
Property Settings API
Property Details API
Contracting API
1
2
3
Licenses API
Facilities API
4
5
Foundational solutions for the Home
segment:
Charges API
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Impact
Ongoing initiative.
Multiple sources conﬁrm that the adoption of modular
Content and onboarding APIs by providers has
substantially accelerated the onboarding of new
properties.
Improvements extend beyond the API connection to also
touch the overall onboarding experience of properties
such as: reducing manual work, errors, and unnecessary
delays.
We set the invitative in motion, used an experiment
approach, closely collaborated with partners for feedback
to build APIs that work for their needs.
After successful validation in the Home segment, we are
now trying to apply the learnings with the Global Hotel
Chains in mind.
24

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03
Story #3
How did we convince Chains to give
us the last available room
Last available room

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1. Global Hotel Chains are connected to multiple
OTAs to sell their inventory.
2. Global Hotel Chains run their own full fledged
direct digital channel, brand.com.
3. Booking.com sells inventory that is provided by
partners.
4. Overbooking is a significant operational and
financial problem for Global Hotel Chains and
Booking.com. When they occur, they impact guest
satisfaction, partner relationships, and cost money.
Why live availability check is important?

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What did we do?
Starting around 2020, Booking.com began partnering with major chains (e.g., Accor among others) to
implement Live Availability Checks across all channels (Desktop, Mobile Web and Mobile).
Guest Booking.com
Chain A
CRS
1. Guest selects a room
to book 2. Check if the room is still available
3. Room is still available
4. Room is no longer available
3.1. Allow guest to
proceed
4.1. Redirect guest to
alternative options
Generic and simpliﬁed LAC workﬂow

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For Chain A: The removal of the 5-room threshold in
exchange for a led to a 93% reduction in reservation
fallbacks and an 80% reduction in overbookings during
the pilot phase.
For Chain B: Over 2,000 reservations annually previously
involved availability issues, with the live check project
reducing costly guest relocations by at least 80%, saving
up to 200€ per relocation instance and signiﬁcantly
improving Customer Satisfaction and review scores.
For Chain C: Within 4 months from launching the service,
1600+ new rooms were added leading to an increase of
+3000 room nights.
Data from pilots directly informed scaling these solutions
to other Global Hotel Chains.
Despite popularity, this service is restricted for Global
Hotel Chains for the moment.
Impact
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Summary
1. Data driven decisions
2. Experiment, learn, improve
3. Focus on your real customer

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