Flybe to offer direct access to pricing and booking engine

Flybe is to allow online agents direct access to its pricing and booking engine in an effort to avoid screenscraping.

The move is designed to protect its main website booking engine while supporting online retailers that provide a “valued revenue stream”.

The airline is creating an XML-based Web Services option that will allow third parties to directly access its pricing and booking engine without the need for them to resort to screenscraping.

Head of sales Stephen Hobday said: “By taking seats directly from our website, online agencies provide a valued revenue stream at minimal distribution cost.

“As technology continues to evolve, it will be inevitable that demand from web-based platforms such as those used by flight aggregators, dotcoms and providers of travel agent and corporate booking tools, will increase.

“To make the process more robust and appropriate to the expectations of our partners, Flybe are in the latter stages of developing and testing web services allowing online agents to connect to its API (Application Programming Interface). 

“By providing a direct feed from our inventory to the online retailer there will be significant benefit to both the customer and the airline.”

He said that the current method of screenscraping, whereby information is extracted from the flybe.com website, has the limitation of not being able to automatically identify any enhancements that the airline makes to the booking process.

“This can create varying amounts of down time whilst both parties re-define code to reflect the changes,” said Hobday.

“This can result in a loss of revenue all round and an associated resource cost. However, with Web Services, the online agency will be connected to our outgoing feed so will no longer need to go via our website and will benefit from all of Flybe’s product development. 

“Undoubtedly, as volume increases from screen scrapers, particularly during peak periods or when our schedules launch, there is the potential that the speed of our public website may be affected.

“However, Web Services takes the process away from the main booking engine and ensures that the procedure is not compromised.” 

“In the online environment, Web Services is becoming the de-facto messaging standard. The onus is on us to integrate this in to our strategy and continue to work with our partners in what can only be viewed as a win-win situation for everyone.”       

by Phil Davies