Accommodation pricing guide

Understand how accommodation pricing works across endpoints, how to interpret different price components, and how to display prices accurately and transparently in your platform.

Overview

This guide explains the accommodation pricing model used in Demand API. It is structured to help you:

• Understand price components.
• Retrieve price data correctly from different endpoints.
• Display price information clearly and lawfully.

Key pricing concepts

When querying for availability or searching for accommodation, and also when previewing the order before processing the booking, the responses retrieve a product.price object that:

• Displays the price breakdown with different fields and their values.
• Defines what the traveller will or might have to pay.

However, you cannot find here when or how the traveller must pay, for this information see the Payments section.

Before diving into endpoints, let’s clarify the pricing model and key price fields.

Price object fields

Pricing comparison across endpoints

There are slightly different parameters in the accommodations/search and availability responses, and those offered in orders/preview response.

Retrieving price information

Use the following endpoints to access accommodation pricing information:

Example accommodations/availability response

Here's an example of an /accommodations/availability response, with the price object breakdown, including extra_charges:

{
  ...
  "currency": "GBP",
  "products": [
    {
      "id": "xxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxx_x_x_x",
      "price": {
        "base": 153.40,
        "book": 167.21,
        "extra_charges": {
          "conditional": [...],
          "excluded": [
            {
              "charge": 10,
              "mode": "incalculable",
              "percentage": null,
              "total_amount": null,
              "unit_amount": null
            },
            {
              "charge": 22,
              "mode": "percentage",
              "percentage": 1.00,
              "total_amount": 1.53,
              "unit_amount": null
            }
          ],
          "included": [
            {
              "charge": 21,
              "mode": "percentage",
              "percentage": 9.00,
              "total_amount": 13.81,
              "unit_amount": null
            }
          ]
        },
        "total": 168.74
      }
    }
  ]
}

In this example, you can see the following price components: Base, book and total price, as well as conditional, excluded and included extra charges.

Example orders/preview response

The pricing breakdown returned by the /orders/preview endpoint includes the base and total prices, and also the chargeable_online field.

"price": {
        "base": {
          "accommodation_currency": 100,
          "booker_currency": null
        },
        "chargeable_online": {
          "accommodation_currency": 100,
          "booker_currency": null
        },
        "total": {
          "accommodation_currency": 123,
          "booker_currency": null
        },
        "extra_charges": {
          "conditional": [],
          "non_conditional": [
            {
              "charge": 142,
              "chargeable_online": true,
              "total_amount": {
                "accommodation_currency": 6,
                "booker_currency": null
              }
            },
            {
              "charge": 21,
              "chargeable_online": false,
              "total_amount": {
                "accommodation_currency": 14.67,
                "booker_currency": null
              }
            },
            {
              "charge": 22,
              "chargeable_online": true,
              "total_amount": {
                "accommodation_currency": 11.41,
                "booker_currency": null
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      },

• The book price is not visible, as this is no longer needed to be displayed before booking.
• The non_conditional additional charges indicate the final charges that have been included in the total price and must be paid to proceeed the booking.
• chargeable_online: 100 means that 100 out of 123 of the total price, will be charged by Booking online.

Currency and rounding considerations

All amounts are displayed in both the accommodation_currency and the booker_currency.

• Small discrepancies may appear due to currency conversion or rounding logic.
• To prevent errors due to rounding:
  • Authorise a small buffer (e.g. a few cents) during initial payment authorisation.
  • Use consistent rounding rules across all steps.

Example with different currencies

In the following orders/preview response:

"total": {
  "accommodation_currency": 92.00,
  "booker_currency": 78.95
}

• The traveller is located in England, hence the booker currency defaults to Pounds (GBR).

• The accommodation is located in Spain so the accommodation currency presents the amount in Euros (EUR).

Therefore all charges are displayed in both currencies.

Handling price discrepancies

Price values between accommodations/availability and /orders/preview responses may differ slightly due to:

• Inventory changes – Availability and pricing may fluctuate in real time as rooms are booked or released.

• Rate restrictions – Some rates are only available under specific conditions, such as non-refundable policies or minimum stay requirements.

• Country-based pricing – Prices may vary depending on the country of the booker, and regulatory requirements.

  • Example: Some countries display prices inclusive of all taxes and fees, while others show a breakdown of base price and additional fees.

• Guest or date modifications – When changing the number of guests or reservation dates (using the /orders/modify endpoint) may result in a different total price.

Example of price discrepancy

Below are examples of two responses with minor price differences:

{
  "price": {
    "base": 8485200.18,
    "book": 9622217.00,
    "extra_charges": {
      "conditional": [],
      "excluded": [],
      "included": [
        {
          "charge": 1,
          "mode": "percentage",
          "percentage": 5.00,
          "total_amount": 424260.01,
          "unit_amount": null
        },
        {
          "charge": 21,
          "mode": "percentage",
          "percentage": 8.00,
          "total_amount": 712756.81,
          "unit_amount": null
        }
      ]
    },
    "total": 9622217.00
  }
}

In this case, the price discrepancy between the two endpoints is 0.20 cents.

How to handle price discrepancies

When you notice slight price differences between the /accommodations/availability and /orders/preview endpoints, we recommend:

Next steps

For best practices and full details on how charges are calculated or displayed, see: