The Essential Guide to Holiday APIs for Travel App Success

The December holidays are the Super Bowl for travel brands. From Thanksgiving weekend to New Year‘s Eve, travelers flock to airports, hotels and booking sites in record numbers.

Global end-of-year flight bookings jumped over 32% in 2022 compared to 2021 according to data from Kayak. The peak booking window is now starting as early as September. And the average holiday trip duration has extended to over 8 nights according to Expedia.

So with billions in additional holiday revenue up for grabs, travel players need to bring their A-game.

That‘s where holiday APIs come in. By tapping into these holiday data services, you can optimize your app for seasonal demands and behaviors.

Let‘s explore the critical role holiday APIs play in travel app success…

Why Holiday APIs are Key for Travel Brands

Holiday APIs may seem like a simple concept. But the wrong holiday data (or lack of it) can have cascading consequences:

  • Botched demand forecasts – Bad holiday assumptions underpin false demand projections. And overestimating or underestimating peak demand by even 5% can result in millions lost.

  • Staffing nightmares – Not accounting for holidays in other geographies can leave international call centers understaffed when customer volumes spike.

  • Disgruntled customers – Nobody wants a surprise denied boarding or hotel overbooking during family vacations.

  • Lost opportunities – Competitors leveraging holiday insights for targeting and pricing can steadily grab market share.

On the flip side, travel players using holiday APIs successfully have seen:

  • British Airways optimizing UK airport slot allocations during holidays for $18M in added revenue.
  • Packaged apps providers like Priceline building highly-personalized holiday trip recommendations.
  • Cruise lines like Royal Caribbean tailoring on-board offerings to upcoming seasonal events at each destination.

So whether creating operational efficiencies or customer delight, holiday data is fuel for travel innovation.

Now let‘s explore the top holiday API platforms on the market…

1. Abstract Holiday API

Founded in 2020 by marketing data veterans, Abstract API aimed to bring simplicity and affordability to sourcing quality data. Their Holiday API was developed in-house by a 10-person team including leading economists.

Built on a serverless cloud infrastructure, the API leverages several patented optimization techniques allowing over 50,000 requests per second per customer. A globally distributed content delivery network handles data delivery and caching.

The holiday database spans over 190 countries from 1 AD to 2050. A multi-stage validation process ensures high accuracy by corroborating values against several government and statistical data sources.

Sample customers include Oyo, UPS and Visa which use the API for tailored holiday promotions, scheduling and fraud detection respectively.

Recent enhancements include expanded regional coverage for APAC and South America and new endpoints for religion-based holidays. The roadmap covers adding machine learning for forecasting models and integrating with business intelligence tools like Tableau.

Priced from free to $199/month, Abstract makes it easy for any travel app to get started with holiday data.

Use Cases: Personalizing marketing, predicting peak demand, inventory allocation decisions.

2. Calendarific Holiday API

Key Considerations for Selecting a Holiday API

When scoping your holiday API needs, here are 5 key analysis steps that I recommend:

1. Document holiday impact scenarios – Quantify the revenue, operational efficiency and customer experience impact of holiday data across various business scenarios. Measure the ROI.

2. Map data needs to products – Detail theholiday API data attributes (regions, categories etc) required for each product and team to size scope.

3. Assess current solutions – Review any holiday data capabilities via current vendors/contracts. Identify gaps.

4. Size potential solutions – Shortlist vendor solutions that could meet defined scope across dimensions like pricing, coverage, performance etc.

5. Validate accuracy & quality – Rigorously vet holiday API data accuracy before fully integrating into products and processes.

Following a methodical analytics-based approach makes the path to holiday API success much smoother. Reach out if you need any help.

Over to you now! Which holiday API meets your needs?

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