How quickly will a hotel booking API bring back search results for my customers?

Yes, most hotel searches come back within a few seconds, but the exact time depends on the supplier behind the API and on how wide the search is. A search for one named hotel on fixed dates is quick. A search across a whole city, with many room types and several guests, has far more to look at, so it will take longer.

The reason for the wait is that the API has to ask the supplier for live prices and availability at the moment your customer searches. Those prices are not held in advance, because they change through the day and a stale price would fail at booking. If a supplier is slow to answer, your search is slow too, and nothing at our end can make their system reply faster.

There are sensible ways to keep the wait comfortable. Results can be shown as they arrive instead of all at once, so your customer sees the first hotels while the rest are still coming in. A search can also be narrowed to a smaller area or to fewer suppliers. Repeat searches for the same city and dates can be answered from a short lived copy of the last result, which is quicker, though a few of those rooms may need checking again before the booking goes through.

If searches feel slow on your portal, note the city, the dates and the time of day, and check whether it happens with every supplier or only one. That tells you whether it is the search settings on your side or the supplier's own system, and the answer is different for each.