Can I check whether a hotel has availability for specific dates before my customer tries to book a room?

Yes, you can check real-time availability through the hotel booking API before your customer completes their booking. When your customer searches for hotels with their chosen check-in and check-out dates, the API shows you which properties have rooms available right now and how many rooms each hotel can offer. This means you and your customer can see straight away whether the hotel you want to book has space, rather than finding out after they have already started the booking process.

The availability information comes directly from the hotel suppliers and updates throughout the day as other bookings are made and cancelled. However, the speed and accuracy of these updates depend on how quickly the suppliers send their data to us. In rare cases, a room might show as available when your customer searches but then become unavailable by the time they complete the booking if another customer books it in between. This happens because hotels can receive bookings from many sources at the same time.

You can also see how many rooms of each type are available, which helps you and your customer understand whether a popular hotel is running low on inventory or whether they have plenty of choices. If the hotel you want is sold out, you can then search for nearby alternatives or different dates instead of wasting time on a booking that cannot go through.

To start using real-time availability through your hotel API, check with your account manager what level of detail your current plan includes, since some suppliers provide more detailed inventory information than others.