What Is a Travel Itinerary API, and How Can It Benefit Your Travel Business?

As with any technology trend, there's a lot of hype surrounding APIs. What is an API, exactly, and how can a business use a travel itinerary API to make traveling and travel planning easier? Here's a deeper dive into this technology with a look at how APIs create opportunities for innovation in travel.

What Is an API?

An API, or an application programming interface, is a web service that allows businesses to significantly augment their existing technology capabilities without the need for in-house expertise in niches like SMS, social media chatbots, or customer sentiment analysis. From the user side, it allows site visitors to complete a specific task like messaging a chatbot or viewing a calendar without leaving your business web page, according to FreeCodeCamp.

The "interface" in API means that it connects two or more systems or applications to create seamless integration, making communications quicker and more productive. APIs are enabling impressive innovation in a variety of industries today, and travel companies can simply partner with an experienced travel API provider to quickly obtain the best-in-class, scalable communication functionality they require.

Improve Customer Service

As any traveler will tell you, there's nothing quite as stress-inducing as a travel experience gone wrong — and, by extension, nothing quite as delightful as one that goes off without a hitch. To ensure that their customers enjoy more hiccup-free trips, businesses in the travel industry are using APIs to deliver more responsive, personalized customer service than ever before.

When a traveler's flight has been delayed, they'll often be forced to forage for snacks and power outlets in a bustling airport terminal until a plane finally becomes available. Even more maddeningly, they might make it all the way to the airport only to learn that their flight has been canceled. Fortunately for everyone involved, these unnecessarily frustrating experiences are quickly becoming a thing of the past thanks to the customer service innovations of a travel itinerary API.

Airlines can now immediately update their travelers on itinerary changes or flight cancellations via SMS alerts, reaching them on their smartphones before they leave their homes or offices for the airport. With a single tap on the customer care phone number included in one of these alerts, travelers can speak directly with an agent for on-demand personalized assistance. The agent receives an automated summary of the passenger's situation before taking the call that allows them to quickly and efficiently resolve the issue. With APIs providing timely notification and expert guidance, an otherwise exasperating journey becomes much easier to navigate.

APIs give companies in the travel sector a strategic advantage over the competition, ensuring long-term customer loyalty and steady rave reviews.

Alleviate Stress

The streamlined delay alert process powered by a communication API comes in especially handy in more human circumstances, like when traveler is worried about missing a connecting flight or is waiting to board a bereavement flight. Rather than feeling disregarded by a faceless corporate entity, the passenger instead feels that the airline is going the extra mile to meet their needs and promptly resolve potential problems before they arise.

Of course, a traveler's journey is only just beginning once they arrive at the airport. Airlines can use a travel itinerary API to give their passengers a proactive heads up about gate changes to avoid forcing anyone to wander long distances toting heavy baggage. Likewise, if a passenger takes their first flight of the day only to land in an unfamiliar airport where their gate has been changed last-minute, a timely SMS alert will help them make it to their connecting flight on time with less anxiety and physical exertion.

Boost Customer Satisfaction

The seamless travel communication made possible by APIs is meaningful because it acknowledges the burdens of modern travel and seeks to alleviate them. Rather than associating an airline's service with stress and panic, customers regard the airline as a trusted partner who cares about getting them to their destination on time with minimal disruptions. A consistently thoughtful and rewarding customer experience boosts satisfaction, benefiting both the customer and their airline of choice.

Businesses in the travel and hospitality industry want to distinguish themselves from the competition by delivering a peerless customer experience. A travel itinerary API can help them do just that. Accordingly, customers will begin to perceive a service that they might otherwise have considered a necessary evil — air travel — as an experience with inherent value. As a recent PwC survey found, today's customers are willing to pay up to 16 percent more for a better customer experience. The travel sector can capitalize on this trend by enhancing the customer experience they already provide with API integrations to secure a healthy bottom line and an enviable position in the market.

APIs aren't simply the latest fad in alphabet-soup technology jargon. They're a tool that empowers travel businesses to greatly improve the customer experience they provide. APIs give companies in the travel sector a strategic advantage over the competition, ensuring long-term customer loyalty and steady rave reviews.