Bed banks and hotel wholesalers all promise great rates and huge inventory. Use these seven criteria to find the suppliers that actually fit your markets and your platform.
1. Coverage Where Your Customers Travel
A supplier with a million properties is not useful if it is weak in your top destinations. Ask for inventory reports for your key cities and compare them with your booking history.
2. Rate Competitiveness
Run price checks on a sample of hotels and dates across suppliers. Look at net rates, but also at how often each supplier has the cheapest offer for the same property.
3. API Quality and Speed
Slow or unreliable APIs cost bookings. Review documentation, test response times, and check how rates are re-validated before booking to avoid price changes at checkout.
4. Content and Mapping
Good descriptions, images and consistent hotel codes make a big difference. Check whether the supplier provides GIATA codes or other mapping data to help remove duplicates.
5. Cancellation Policies and Payment Terms
Understand deadlines, penalties and how policies are expressed in the API. Also compare credit terms, deposits and supported currencies.
6. Look-to-Book Limits
Many suppliers limit the number of searches per booking. Make sure their limits fit your traffic, and plan caching strategies with your development team.
7. Support and Certification
A responsive technical team shortens certification and resolves live issues faster. Ask about support hours, escalation paths and test environments.
Combine Suppliers Wisely
Most successful platforms use two to five hotel suppliers, mapped together so each hotel appears once with the best rate. Our team can help you shortlist suppliers and build the integration layer to compare them automatically.
