Search, look and book integration

Let travellers search for travel products, review live prices and availability, and complete their booking without leaving your platform.

A Search, look and book integration combines live search and availability with the Orders API collection to provide an end-to-end booking experience on your platform.

Travellers can search, compare options, review current prices and booking conditions, and complete their booking within your application:

• Use search endpoints to find travel products that match the traveller's criteria.
• Use availability endpoints to retrieve current prices, availability and booking conditions.
• Use /orders/preview to retrieve and validate the final order details before booking.
• Use /orders/create to create the order after the traveller confirms.

Unlike a Search, look and redirect integration, the traveller is not redirected to Booking.com to complete the booking.

Choose this integration if you want to:

• Provide an end-to-end booking experience within your application.
• Let travellers search, compare and book without being redirected to Booking.com.
• Present final pricing and booking conditions before confirmation.
• Create bookings using the Orders API.
• Integrate supported payment flows into your booking experience.

Before implementing this integration, complete the Demand API prerequisites.

You also need the content, search and availability capabilities required to let travellers find and select a travel product before starting the order flow.

For guidance on these capabilities, see:

• Content-only integration for retrieving and storing descriptive and reference data.
• Search, look and redirect for implementing search and availability.

A Search, look and book integration extends the search and selection experience with an order flow.

Your application:

• Finds suitable travel products.
• Retrieves current pricing and availability.
• Previews the order.
• Presents the final order details to the traveller.
• And creates the order after the traveller confirms.

A typical Search, look and book integration follows these steps:

Use the relevant search endpoint to find travel products that match the traveller's criteria.

Search criteria vary by travel service and can include information such as:

• Destination or location.
• Travel dates.
• Number of travellers.
• Occupancy.
• Other travel-service-specific criteria.

Use the search response to present matching options and, where required, identify the travel products for which you need more detailed availability information.

Use the relevant availability endpoint to retrieve current information for the travel product or option the traveller is considering.

Depending on the travel service, availability information can include:

• Current pricing.
• Availability.
• Booking conditions.
• Policies.
• Product or option details required to continue the booking flow.

Availability and pricing are dynamic. Retrieve the current information required for the traveller's selection before continuing to the order flow.

Before creating an order, send the selected product and required booking information to /orders/preview.

The preview step returns the information required for the traveller to review the order before confirming it.

Depending on the travel service and booking, the response can include:

• Final pricing.
• Taxes and charges.
• Payment information.
• Cancellation and booking policies.
• Product information.
• Other information required to create the order.

The /orders/preview response also returns an order token. Use this token when creating the order with /orders/create.

Use the preview response to present the final order details to the traveller before they confirm the booking.

Payment requirements can vary depending on the travel service, product, rate and payment configuration.

Use the information returned by the Demand API to determine the payment experience required for the selected booking.

Your implementation may need to handle information such as:

• Payment timing.
• Supported payment methods.
• Payment card details.
• Payment guarantees.
• Additional payment requirements.

Do not assume that the same payment flow applies to every booking.

After the traveller reviews and confirms the final order details, use /orders/create to create the order.

• Pass the order token returned by /orders/preview together with the information required by the create request.

• A successful response confirms that the order has been created and returns information that your application can use for confirmation and subsequent order-related workflows.

Store the identifiers and other order information required by your application for later retrieval, reporting or post-booking operations.

After the order is successfully created, show the traveller a clear confirmation of the booking.

Use the information returned by the API to display the confirmation details relevant to the travel service and booking.

Depending on the response, this can include:

• Order or reservation identifiers.
• Booked product details.
• Travel dates.
• Price and payment information.
• Relevant booking conditions or policies.

Keep the order identifiers returned by the API so that the booking can be retrieved or managed later where supported.

Before considering your Search, look and book integration complete, verify that:

A Search, look and book integration creates the booking, but post-booking management is a separate capability.

• To retrieve or manage an order after confirmation, use the APIs supported by the Post-booking management integration.

• Reporting and financial workflows are also handled separately. See the Reporting and reconciliation integration for guidance.

After implementing Search, look and book:

1. Test the complete search, availability, preview and create flow.
2. Verify that the final order information shown to the traveller comes from the current preview response.
3. Test the payment flows supported by your integration.
4. Test successful and unsuccessful order creation scenarios.
5. Verify that your application stores the identifiers required for subsequent order operations.
6. Review error handling for the endpoints used by your booking flow.