FAQs Home

Frequently Asked Questions Categories

Getting Started Contains all the information you need to know about the API, as well as links for signing up for a developer account to start using the API immediately.
API Account A variety of common questions regarding the use of your affiliate account with the API
Development Questions about the API works, use with specific languages and protocols, server considerations, and other development topics
Secure Requests Questions about credit card rules and secure certificates required for passing sensitive user information for booking
Pricing Travel suppliers return rates in ways that aren't always consistent with each other.  Refer to this section in order to answer qustions regarding the differences in supplier price responses and how pricing should be handled in your user interface.
Hotels If you understand hotel reservations as product and inventory, you'll do a better job at presenting them on your site and ultimately make more sales.  Refer to this section for common questions that arise regarding content related to hotels and how to convert more users into sales.
How Do I? Everybody eventually has a question about how to do something specific with the API or within their pages.  This section iterates the most common of these.
Internationalization References to the list of languages and currencies that can be used in the API
Outages General info on operational support procedures for planned or unplanned outages.

Expedia/Hotels.com/Travelnow/EAN: How do they all fit together?

  • Expedia.com is the website brand for Expedia, Inc.
  • Hotels.com is another brand owned by Expedia, Inc which operates on it's own technology.
  • Travelnow.com is the platform for the Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN). It also is it's own brand owned by Expedia, Inc but is the technology that is built to power affiliate operations including the use of an affiliate template system as well as API services.

EAN operates independently of Expedia (as does Hotels.com) and is a separate technology system accessing Expedia hotel inventory as a product for affiliates to sell within their own systems. EAN affiliates CANNOT connect to Expedia or Hotels.com and must operate within the EAN technology system in it's entirety to be a successful business partner and to earn commissions.

Is EAN OTA Compliant?

The Open Travel Alliance (OTA) was formed to standardize travel industry messaging for car, air and hotel in 1999.

Many industries attempted to standardize data sets at that time, but over the years it has been recognized that translating data from one source to another is immaterial and each company within the industry has its own individual content above any standardized global data system.

EAN does not conform to the OTA standard since our database content and API were created before the OTA standard was widely recognized. Further, much of the XML from our system does conform, however, there is much more content specific to our company that fits no other industry content.

The EAN API currently follows all best practice industry standards and conforms to the W3C (WorldWideWeb Consortium). The new XML Web Services follows all backward compatibility in order to release new versions (multiple interfaces) operating at the same time. The data model includes consistent messaging for a variety of requests and responses. New data can easily be added to the schema when available, either through the same version or through a new release. The messaging outline is extremely simple and self-explanatory and only certain proprietary company information needs additional documented explanation such as “Merchant vs. Agency”.

Industry professionals recognize the problem with creating global standards: An attempt to standardize data sets for a given industry becomes complicated when trying to draft meta data standards to capture ALL of a complex industry’s knowledge. Proliferating schemas within a wide variety of industries are a reflection of the complexity of the data that needs to be described also within individual companies.

Where is the Integration Guide for Private Label Affiliates?

Affiliates who need assistance with integration of their Private Label template can find help by visiting our Example Travel web site.

  • Download the Affiliate Integration Guide found on the home page of this web site for a step by step process in setting up your own private label site.

You will also find 2 additional documents that cover some of the same material by visiting the Affiliate Center.

  1. Private Label Set Up
  2. Custom Header Guide
Note that XML requires skilled programming abilities. It is not a "cut and paste" alternative to the affiliate template.
  • If you do not have knowledge of XML programming or the resources to hire this work, you are advised to use the Private Label template.
  • We can assist with the proper and expected methods and uses of our products, but we are unable to troubleshoot your own programming or server configurations.
  • To resolve any request issues, download and follow the Debugging Worksheet. This method has proven to be failproof in finding and resolving all issues in properly building your XML requests.

Are the Destination Guides available?

  • We're currently not able to offer Destination Guides content through the API.
  • Refer to the EAN Affiliate Center for linking methods to use those pages.
  • All affiliates are best served to create their own UNIQUE destiantion content for the most benefit in their site rankings.