Getting started

This page covers authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and versioning for the RtB API.

As with any other Connectivity API, you can use machine account based authentication.

RtB API requires the same property permissions as the Reservations API.

We apply rate limiting in the RtB API, please see connectivity rate limiting for more information.

Use the X-Booking-Api-Version header to select the API version, which in turn selects the RtB contract your integration follows.

X-Booking-Api-Version: 2.0.0

If you omit the header, the API defaults to 1.0.1.

RtB is offered as two major versions, each with a different inventory behavior:

• Version 1.x (INQUIRY flow). A pending request is informational and does not hold inventory. Block availability only when the request becomes BOOKED.
• Version 2.x (RTB flow). Each request carries a requestType field that determines its inventory behavior. For RTB requests, a pending request holds inventory, so you block and release provider-side availability based on the request status. For INQUIRY requests, the behavior matches version 1.x: the pending request is informational and does not hold inventory. This is the model described in the RtB 2.0 section.

Pick the version that matches your integration via the version header. Incremental features (such as withdrawal) ship to both major versions independently, so each has its own version history.

Include the following headers in your RtB API requests.

For pre-reservation messaging via Messaging API, see pre-reservation messaging section.

This requires implementing the Messaging API.