tlacloche

Hi everyone,

i was wondering whether there is an OTA that doesnt forbid scraping their search results in their terms of service.

thanks

fuyao

Not that I know of cause they have to pay their data provider for the data they get.

bprsofteng

There are a few, however if you have a commercial venture many OTAs have direct API access.

fuyao

There are OTAs with API access? That would be new but music to my ears!
Which OTAs offer API access?

paulwuk

http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/ho...ons/developer/

Is one place to look at, although not exactly an OTA. Getthere.com is tied into sabre.

bprsofteng

If you can PM me with what you're trying to achieve and some further details I'll see if I can't point you in the right direction.

fuyao

Sabre is a GDS and of course offers direct API access, however, they are quite pricey.

mia77

Any OBT / CBT like Get There, KDS, Concur use the GDS - the data is taken from the GDS, and a PNR created for ticketing in the GDS. Even Expedia as an OTA uses a GDS connection. Problem with a screen scrape is the data you get will change quickly. And years ago certain agency technology scraped low cost carrier site data for low costs tools - Ryan Air kicked off and prohibited it and often changed the layout, stopping any screen scraping from working properly. Times changed and most low cost aggregates would use an API (And the airlines changed tack even Ryan Air now joined the rest and show content in the GDS)

Get there is a online booking tool, not an online travel agency. An agency / corporate can buy and use get there, but unless you have access joe blogs can't use it - unlike Expedia as an online agency. But still both OBT's and OTA's are powered by a GDS underneath.

fuyao

I'm still having problems understanding what exactly getthere and concur is. to me it looks like just an interface for companies and employees to keep track of their itinerary, upload receipts etc.
or does it actually provide any data?

mia77

A CBT is a booking tool - an OTA is an online agency. An agency may use a CBT..but a CBT cannot be used with out an agency and IATA number... but an agency could operate without using an CBT... confused yet?

Corporate booking tools (also referred to as OBT's - include KDS, Concur, Get there (owned by Sabre) AETM (owned by Amadeus) Traveldoo etc etc that are used by companies to assist their employees business travel reservations - in order to use one, you would need an IATA licence i.e be an agency

1) you can make travel arrangements on 2) track itineraries as you said 3) link with expenses for business trips 4) set travel policies 5) store a profile, with frequent travel no's, APIS info, seat and meal preference, cost centers for reporting etc.

So if you worked for a bank say and did business travel the bank would be a customer of a travel management company and employees of the bank would call the TMC to make bookings over the phone, via email etc -

but the bank in arrangement with the TMC may also use a CBT like Concur - the passengers would access via their company intranet site usually.

The site is linked to a GDS (Concur can be used with Sabre, Gal and Amadeus for example) the passenger would make a reservation and the display that comes back for say a J LON-NYC might return certain results on the policy of the company. So if the bank had a deal with VS and not BA - they can set VS to in policy and BA to out of policy. The TMC may have favourable airline rates, the bank can use and would also show in the returned availability display etc

Once booked on the CBT, reservations can be sent to an authoriser within the company (which is set in the CBT and they can set spend limits which trigger an auth process etc) or send straight for ticketing - again this can vary but will be queued to the GDS queue and 'auto ticketed' by a robotic process or an actual agent at the TMC may retrieve the booking, and manually ticket in the GDS.
If the booking is out of policy and not authorised, the TMC agent would pick it up and contact the passenger, or they may set default to auto cancel the booking in the CBT. Can vary - so for a company, they can set travel spends, track their employees, ensure expenses are logged correctly, push prefered carriers, hotels and quite important these days - provide reporting internally on travel spend.

You can set passengers up with different policies, set VIP levels (so if say 5 VIP's were on the same flight it would flag if that was against policy etc etc)

To make it more confusing, the bank in this instance - may 'own' the CBT site and work directly with the CBT to configure and set up and just use the TMC for fulfillment. Or the bank could 'rent' the site from the TMC and the TMC would do all the configuration, the TMC would work with the CBT on any issues. Lots of reasons why a company would choose different options, but they would use the Travel Management companies IATA - new accounts, the TMC would apply for a new IATA - and can get more complex than that.

However, whilst CBT's are called OBT's as well - the term OBT can also cover sites like TrainLine, which is an online booking tool...but doesn't require a GDS connection and isn't restricted by IATA rules.

An OTA - is an online agency using a GDS API connection (and you need an IATA licence to set up with a GDS) that the public uses to search and make bookings - its an actual agency in its own right that works with the GDS provider, to provide content to the search engine like Expedia.

Hope that makes some sense.... tis confusing.

In this case the OP, I guess is looking to screen scrape from sites like Expedia and Opodo. But that's fraught with issues and using an API will cost money.