Will a hotel booking API give me the hotel photos and descriptions to show on my website?

Yes, a hotel booking API normally gives you hotel content as well as rooms and rates, so your website can show a proper hotel page with pictures, a description, the address and the facilities rather than just a name and a price.

The content usually reaches you in two ways. A little of it comes back with the search results, things like the hotel name, the star rating, one main image and a short room description, so the results page has something to show straight away. The fuller material, meaning the photo galleries, the facility lists, the check in and check out times and the longer descriptions, is normally taken from a separate content feed that is loaded in advance and kept on your side. Suppliers work this way because sending all of that with every single search would make searching very slow for your customers.

How good the content is depends completely on the supplier, and it does vary. Some send plenty of large, clear photographs and descriptions in several languages, while others send only a few small images and a line or two of text. There are also rules about use. The images belong to the hotel or the supplier, not to you, so your agreement will usually say that you may show them on your own site while you are working with that supplier, that you should refresh the content regularly, and that you may not pass it on elsewhere.

Before you commit to a supplier, ask to see the content for a handful of hotels you already know well in the places you sell most, and check whether the photos and descriptions are something you would be happy to put in front of your own customers.