Features

Explore the capabilities of the Merchandising API

Campaign Content endpoint

You can use the Campaign Content endpoint to search upcoming campaigns using request parameters including:

• Bookable date range
• Stay date range
• At or above values for minimum review score, minimum star rating, and/or minimum discount

You will receive a response with all the campaign details for:

• Limited time offer (LTO) campaigns per super region with a booking window within the next 6 months
• All available evergreen campaigns
• Any LTO campaigns with a booking window beyond 6 months from the API request date. However, the following fields will be excluded in the API response for these campaigns until the booking window falls within the upcoming 6 month window:
  • Booking and travel dates
  • Min and max discount %

The following campaign information will be available in the Campaign Content response:

• Campaign ID
• Campaign name
• Bookable date range, stay date range, and any blackout dates
• Limited time offer or evergreen distinction
• Values for minimum review score, minimum star rating, and/or minimum discount
• Curated Expedia-provided campaign assets such as campaign thematic images, destination imagery, suggested copy, etc.

Request

Request parameters

Response

The Campaign Content endpoint can help you leverage Expedia-curated assets to create traveler-facing merchandising experiences such as promotional emails, app widgets, website banners, etc.

You can use the property_count field in the Campaign Content response to determine the most up-to-date number of participating properties. Property participation in merchandising campaigns is dynamic, so we recommend you assess the property_count approximately 4-6 weeks before a campaign starts to get a more accurate sense of how many properties will be providing deals as part of the campaign.

Promotions endpoint

You can use the Promotions endpoint to easily filter and search for deals using request parameters such as:

• Campaign ID and/or Property ID
• Bookable date range
• Stay date range
• At or above values for minimum review score, minimum star rating, and/or minimum discount
• Limited time vs evergreen distinction
• Member-only and mobile-only deal flags
• Super region or specific destinations
• Machine learning relevancy score sort order

The below details will be returned in the Promotions API response:

• Deal ID, corresponding campaign ID, and property ID
• Bookable date range, stay date range, blackout dates, and advance purchase window
• Limited time vs. evergreen distinction
• Machine learning-powered relevancy scores unique to your business for the deals, properties, and destinations returned in the response
• Specific destinations and chain ID information
• Tokenized link to the existing Rapid Property Content API to pull property-level imagery to feature in your merchandising experiences

Request

Request parameters

Response

You can easily search and filter the Promotions response for more targeted deals, so you have full control over what deals you surface to travelers. You can also curate these deals to build your own campaign themes instead of using Expedia-defined campaigns and associated assets.

You can use the include request parameter on the Promotions endpoint to customize the size of the response you receive. So instead of receiving all response fields, if you only need a few fields returned, you can add those specific field names in the include parameter.

You can use the property_count field in the Campaign Content response to determine the most up-to-date number of participating properties. Property participation in merchandising campaigns is dynamic, so we recommend you assess the property_count approximately 4-6 weeks before the campaign starts to get a more accurate sense of how many properties will be providing deals as part of the campaign.

Like the Campaign Content guidance, we recommend making your Promotions requests as close to the campaign bookable start date as possible to ensure you have the most up-to-date deals.

If you’re interested in building destination-based merchandising campaigns, you can make a region-specific Promotions API request using the relevant region_id from the Rapid Geography API.

Machine learning recommendations in the Promotions response

The Machine learning-powered relevancy scores delivered in the Promotions response are unique to each partner, so the score/rankings you receive will differ from what another partner receives. You can use the machine learning recommendations to identify the best deals, properties, and destinations to promote in your merchandising campaigns. Higher-scoring deals, properties, and destinations will have the highest likelihood of driving conversion among your unique traveler base.

Currently, you will receive relevancy scores for the top 10k deals in each campaign. In our testing, we found the value and impact of this score became negligible beyond the first 10k deals.

Based on your use case, you can use the sort_by parameter to define the sort order of the Promotions response, choosing to order based on deal, property, or destination relevancy as determined by our machine learning model for you to get the maximum value from merchandising in terms of visibility and bookings from the travelers.

• If you pass sort_by = promotion you will receive all the deal results ranked high-to-low (1 to 10,000) per our proprietary machine learning algorithm. You can use this sort to get the top recommended deals that our model expects to convert more.
• If you pass sort_by = property you will receive all the deal results from the properties ranked high-to-low per our proprietary machine learning algorithm.
• If you pass sort_by = destination you will receive all the deal results from the destinations ranked high-to-low per our proprietary machine learning algorithm.

Changes made to the Shopping Availability API

To get the latest details on availability, live pricing, refundability, commissions info, etc. you should make a standard request to Rapid’s Shopping Availability API We have made the following changes to the Shopping API to support merchandising flows and make your integration of the Merchandising API as smooth as possible:

• Partners can use the new deal filter available in the Rapid Shopping Availability endpoint to only receive rates that feature active promotions. This gives partners the flexibility to create a Shopping request with an exclusively merchandising focus and ensure that the all the rates returned have a deal attribute.
• A new request header named Campaign-Id is available on Rapid’s Shopping Availability endpoint for you to indicate that the specific Shopping Availability API call you are making is not a regular call and it is in fact due to your merchandising promotional efforts (in other words, this will signify that a Shopping Availability API request was made as the traveler entered the Shop experience due to a campaign promotion). We will accept only one Campaign ID per Shopping API call. This Campaign ID is going to help us track your campaign performance and design better machine learning models and API enhancements for you.

Partners can request details from the Shopping Availability API for up to 250 properties at a time.

Example response

"promotions": {
. "deal": {
.   "id": "999abc",
.   "description": "Book early and save 15%"
. }
}

Note: The id and description available in the Merchandising API response are different to those returned in the Shopping API response. Therefore you are strongly advised to use the id and description returned by the Merchandising API.