Start-up travel technology firm Distribute Travel is poised to launch new white label platform that promises to ease API integration by offering live data from multiple feeds
Travel API tool claims to make data feeds a breeze
Start-up travel technology firm Distribute Travel is poised to launch new white label platform that promises to ease API integration by offering live data from multiple feeds.
The firm, set up last year by three former senior managers of Affiliate Futures, claims the technology will allow retail partners to integrate multiple APIs with little or no development work. It is already working with Thomas Cook and Expedia.
Nic Costa, managing director of Distribute Travel, said: “A lot of companies do not have the capability, the infrastructure or resource to manage all this data.
“We have created a white label platform where a publisher could take a holiday search website and have it branded in their own likeness.
“They will be able to distribute travel inventory without having to have any technical expertise. We have a cloud-based infrastructure behind this, so the bigger the traffic the bigger it gets.”
Costa said the white label product could offer an easy way to provide a travel channel for non-travel websites as well as firms that lack technical expertise.
He said the technology will allow it to provide the large price comparison sites with multi-brand API feeds so they do not have to manage the relationships with all their providers.
New providers can be added to expand the product range and the platform could also be used to deliver pre-determined subsets of data specific to a particular site’s requirements, Costa said.
“There is a lot of work involved in integrating an API feed. Doing it through us means they have already done the integration, so the work they have to do is minimal,” he added.
“We are not trying to be Travelsupermarket but we are allowing partners to carry that level of travel comparison without needing to do any technical work.”
Giles Parnwell, former Affiliate Future head of travel marketing and now Distribute Travel’s sales director, said: “The trouble is publishers have different requirements and needs for integration where a particular API might be suitable for publisher A but not for publisher B.
“We can distribute someone’s products in many different ways that fit with their requirements. We are very used to way publisher integration takes a long time and resources.”
Costa said the white label product was a first version of technology that would eventually offer a completely new way to search for and distribute travel product online.
Distribute Travel is working with a number of agencies providing data for specific online marketing projects such as Facebook ads, data for email campaigns and retargeting banner ads.
Costa said the next iteration of the technology will be focused on providing product from the consumers’ point of view so they do not have to trawl through multiple sites for the best deal.
“The way we have designed this is that results can be reached in a myriad of different ways as well as the more traditional search for a holiday.”
The white label technology is due to go live with a small number of partners next month. The third former Affiliate Future employee behind Distribute Travel is Daniel Chick, its CTO.
