Can my hotel search results load faster for my customers?

Yes, hotel search can usually be made faster, but how much faster depends a great deal on your suppliers rather than on your website. When a customer searches, the request has to travel out to each hotel supplier you are connected to, the supplier has to look up live rooms and prices, and the answers have to come back before results can be shown. If one supplier is slow to answer, that alone can hold up the page, so the honest answer is that we can improve a lot of the journey but we cannot make a supplier respond quicker than it does.

There are several things that do help. Hotel descriptions, photos, addresses, star ratings and facilities do not change from minute to minute, so these can be stored on your side and shown instantly instead of being fetched every time. Results can also be displayed as they arrive, so customers start seeing hotels from the fastest supplier while the slower ones are still replying. Prices for popular cities and dates can sometimes be held for a short period and refreshed in the background, and a sensible time limit can be set so one unresponsive supplier does not stall the whole search.

The limits are worth knowing. Some suppliers do not allow their rates to be stored at all, and where storing is allowed the price still has to be checked again before the customer pays, so a held price is a starting point and not a guarantee. The more suppliers you switch on, the more answers have to be gathered, which is why a tidy supplier list often feels faster than a long one. What is available to you can also depend on your plan and on the terms in your own supplier agreements.

If searches feel slow today, start by checking which suppliers are taking longest to reply and whether your hotel content is being loaded live rather than stored, then talk to us about setting time limits and storing what your agreements permit.