What is travel API aggregation?
Travel API aggregation is combining content from several supplier APIs — GDS, NDC, LCC, consolidator, hotel and others — into one normalised search, pricing and booking interface.
No single source has all the content or the best prices. Aggregation lets a platform search several sources in parallel, deduplicate and rank the results, and book through whichever source wins.
What makes it hard
Each source has its own data model, error behaviour, rate limits, pricing conventions and servicing rules. The aggregation layer must normalise all of this, handle slow or failing suppliers without slowing every search, cache carefully, and keep the look-to-book ratio under control. Deduplication — recognising that two results are the same flight or the same hotel — is a problem in its own right.
Design principle
Keep supplier-specific details inside adapters and expose one internal model to the rest of the platform. Adding a new supplier should mean writing an adapter, not changing checkout.