<1% versus 12% - The Hidden Cost of Availability Errors
What 45 days of real booking data reveal about connectivity infrastructure
Less than 1% versus 12%. That's the gap we see between the best and worst suppliers on our platform when it comes to one specific failure: a booking that gets rejected because the availability was no longer real. At Globick, connectivity is our whole business, so this is the kind of number we pay close attention to — and the kind worth explaining. Availability errors metric gets surprisingly little attention, despite shaping revenue, customer experience and operational load.
The industry loves to celebrate how many products are connected, how many suppliers are live, how many destinations can be sold. But what actually matters is simpler:
Can the booking be completed?
Over the last 45 days we analyzed booking performance across the Globick platform to understand one of the industry's most common and costly problems: availability-related booking failures. The results are a useful benchmark, and they point at a topic that deserves far more attention: the quality of connectivity infrastructure.
As always, supplier names and commercial details are anonymized. The goal isn't to criticize anyone. It's to share real operational data that can help the whole industry improve.
The invisible problem behind failed bookings
Every connectivity professional knows this scenario. A customer searches for an activity. Availability appears to exist. They go to checkout. The booking is sent to the supplier. The supplier rejects it, because the inventory is already gone.
To the customer, that feels like a broken promise. To the distributor, it's lost revenue. To the supplier, it's an avoidable support ticket and a dent in trust.
This is what we call an availability error. Unlike a technical outage or a configuration bug, it doesn't mean the booking system is broken. It means the availability shown to the customer no longer matched reality by the time they tried to book.
The system worked. The information was stale.
The benchmark: how often do availability errors happen?
Across the period we analyzed, availability errors hit roughly 1 in 22 booking attempts — a platform-wide rate of 4.63%.
That number alone is worth pausing on. One in twenty-two is not a rounding error. At scale, it's thousands of travelers who thought they had booked something that wasn't really there.
But the platform average hides the real story. The moment we split the data by how the inventory reaches us, the picture changes completely.
Not all connectivity models behave the same
At a high level, the industry runs on two models.
Direct contracting. The product is contracted directly with the operator who runs the activity. Whoever sells it is sourcing availability from the party that actually owns and controls the inventory, with no commercial layer in between.
Intermediated contracting. The product is sourced through one or more commercial intermediaries — aggregators, resellers, bedbanks — who sit between the operator and the seller. These intermediaries do a lot of valuable work: product aggregation, commercial contracting, supplier onboarding, customer service, content curation, distribution reach.
These services create enormous value. Honestly, much of the tours and activities ecosystem simply could not function without them — they are what let a small distributor sell a global catalogue, and what let a local operator reach markets it would never touch alone. The industry needs them.
But every extra layer is one more place where inventory information has to stay in sync. And that's where it gets interesting.
The difference is significant
Here is the availability error rate for each anonymized supplier, colored by model.
The pattern is not subtle. Intermediated suppliers run availability error rates from about 1% up to roughly 12%. Direct connections mostly sit under 2%.
Rolled up, the gap is stark.
Table 1 — Availability error rate by connectivity model
Availability failures were roughly 5.6 times higher when an intermediary layer sat between the distributor and the original inventory source.
Before anyone jumps to conclusions: this is not an argument against intermediaries. They solve real business problems. They accelerate distribution, they simplify contracting, they help suppliers reach markets they'd never access alone. The data isn't saying intermediaries are worse. It's saying something more precise: every additional commercial step the inventory passes through is another point where its availability can drift out of sync, and that demands a great connectivity infrastructure..
First, a quick word on caching
To understand why extra layers cause trouble, you need one simple concept: caching.
A cache is just a saved copy of information so you don't have to ask for it every single time. When a customer searches for an activity, the platform doesn't call the supplier live for every result — that would be slow and would bury the supplier under millions of requests. Instead it keeps a recent copy of "what's available" and shows that.
The catch is obvious once you say it out loud: a saved copy is only as good as the last time you updated it. The longer ago you refreshed, the more likely reality has moved on — a slot sold out, a price changed, a session got paused. That gap between the saved copy and reality is exactly where availability errors come from.
So every layer between the supplier and the customer typically keeps its own cache, refreshed on its own schedule. More layers means more copies, each potentially a little out of date. The problem usually isn't that anyone is doing a bad job — it's that keeping many copies in sync is genuinely hard.
Which brings us to the trade-off at the heart of every connectivity platform.
The cache paradox
Caching isn't optional — it's the only way to keep search fast and keep suppliers from being buried under requests. But it forces a three-way trade-off that no platform fully escapes.
Table 2 — The cache triangle
The catch is that pushing on one corner usually pulls on the others. More caching means faster searches and lower cost — but a higher risk of stale inventory. Less caching means better accuracy — but more API calls and higher operating cost.
Connectivity architecture is, at heart, the art of balancing these three forces. Nobody gets all three for free.
Four ways to cache availability
Most availability caches can be described along two dimensions: what you cache, and how often you refresh it. That gives four common approaches.
Dates only + fixed refresh is the simplest. You store available dates and refresh on a fixed clock — every hour, every six hours, every day. Easy to build, cheap to run, but a thinner customer experience and more live supplier requests.
Dates only + progressive refresh keeps the cache lightweight but makes the refresh dynamic: a slot tomorrow gets checked every few minutes, the next week every hour, anything beyond a month once a day. It puts resources where volatility actually is, and it's far more efficient than a flat clock.
Dates + sessions + prices + fixed refresh makes the choice of refresh frequency unforgiving. Refresh too rarely and all that detailed information goes stale fast, since sessions and prices change more often than dates do. Refresh too often and you flood the supplier with requests, losing the very efficiency the cache was meant to provide — at the extreme, a high-frequency refresh costs almost as much as having no cache at all. With a fixed clock there's no good answer: the same frequency is always too slow for near dates and wasteful for far ones.
Dates + sessions + prices + progressive refresh is the most sophisticated. You store a lot of commercial information and refresh it intelligently based on how volatile each date is. More engineering, more monitoring — but in our experience the best balance of performance and accuracy by a wide margin.
The last line of defense
No matter how advanced your cache gets, one principle should stay non-negotiable: validate availability in real time, immediately before creating the booking.
A cache is a prediction. A booking is a commitment. Those are not the same thing.
Even the best cache can't perfectly predict the moment inventory changes. Bookings land. Capacity shifts. Operators pause products or adjust manually. Real-time validation right before the booking is the safeguard that protects customers, suppliers, distributors and support teams from a failure that was entirely preventable. Skip it, and you're betting customer experience against cache accuracy — rarely a good trade. It's exactly how a supplier that could sit at 1% ends up closer to 12%.
What the industry should measure
We've gotten very good at measuring growth: connected suppliers, connected products, API calls, revenue, transactions. We pay far less attention to the metrics that decide whether a booking actually works:
- Booking success rate
- Availability error rate
- Inventory synchronization latency
- Availability freshness
These don't look as impressive on a slide as product counts. But a platform with fewer suppliers and higher booking reliability can deliver more real value than a giant catalogue that can't be trusted at checkout.
What we learned
The takeaway isn't that direct connectivity is superior, or that intermediaries should be avoided. Both are essential parts of a healthy distribution ecosystem, and intermediaries in particular create value that the industry genuinely could not replicate without them.
The real lesson is simpler: what separates a 1% supplier from a 12% one is investment in connectivity infrastructure. Cache architecture matters. Refresh strategy matters. Real-time validation matters most of all. None of these come for free — they take engineering time, monitoring, and a deliberate commitment to treat reliability as a feature, not an afterthought.
That investment is rarely visible from the outside, and it's easy to underestimate. We dug into exactly how much it costs to build and maintain connectivity properly in a rare, data-driven look at the true cost of API integrations — worth a read if you want to understand what's really behind a reliable booking flow.
The industry's next competitive advantage probably won't come from connecting more products. It'll come from making sure the products already connected can actually be booked.
Because connectivity isn't measured by how many activities appear on a screen. It's measured by how many bookings reach the supplier and stick. And increasingly, reliability is the most important feature of all.
This benchmark reflects aggregated, anonymized data observed across the Globick platform over a 45-day period. We share it because the tours and activities industry has too little public, real-world data on connectivity performance — and you can't improve what you can't see.
How Tour Operators Actually Sell Experiences — And Why Much of the Industry Gets It Wrong
The tours, activities and attractions sector has become one of the most dynamic segments of the travel industry. Over the last decade, experiences have moved from being a secondary element of a trip to becoming one of the main reasons people travel.
Technology has played a major role in this shift. Online platforms have made it easier than ever for travelers to discover and book activities, while reservation systems have helped suppliers digitize their inventory and distribute it globally.
But behind the visible growth of consumer platforms lies another part of the ecosystem that is equally important and often less discussed: B2B distribution, or how tour operators sell experiences.
Travel agencies, traditional tour operators, DMCs, wholesalers and dynamic packaging platforms sell millions of tours and activities every year as part of larger travel itineraries. Their market share is estimated at 11% for 2025 (source : The Outlook for Travel Experiences 2019–2029 from Arival and PhocusWright), meaning $37 billion, with a 10% growth rate YoY
This part of the ecosystem is particularly relevant for large-scale travel distributors — including major tour operators such as Dertour, Avoris, W2M or MTS — whose systems must handle complex itineraries, high booking volumes and strict operational requirements. These bookings may not always attract the same attention as consumer-facing OTAs, but they represent a significant and stable share of the overall market.
Many of the APIs used today to distribute tours and activities were originally designed with B2C marketplaces in mind. And while these APIs work well for consumer discovery and booking flows, they do not always match the operational logic of B2B travel distribution. At the same time, many experiences operators have not structured their product configurations with B2B distribution in mind, often focusing primarily on how their products appear in consumer marketplaces rather than on how they will be integrated and sold within professional travel distribution systems.
As a result, the industry often tries to solve B2B distribution challenges using tools designed for a completely different environment.
The consequences are visible every day: complex integrations, confusing product catalogues, unclear pricing structures and inefficient booking workflows.
To unlock the full growth potential of the experiences sector, it is important to recognize a simple reality: B2B distribution requires a different kind of API.
B2C and B2B: Two very different sales environments
At first glance, selling an experience might seem like a simple transaction. But the context in which that transaction happens fundamentally changes the requirements of the technology behind it.
Understanding these differences is essential when designing distribution infrastructure for the tours and activities sector.
1. How the search process begins
In most consumer-facing OTAs, product discovery starts with a very simple logic: destination plus keywords.
A traveler might search for something like:
“Rome Colosseum tickets”
The platform then displays a list of products related to that search.
These results may include different variations of the same attraction:
- skip-the-line tickets
- guided tours
- small-group experiences
- private visits
- early access options
The objective in this environment is exploration. The traveler wants to compare alternatives before deciding.
But how do tour operators sell experiences? In B2B environments, the starting point is usually different. Search often begins with a destination and the composition of the travel group.
For example:
Destination: Rome
Adults: 2
Children: 1 (age 8)
This logic closely resembles the way hotel searches work.
The system needs to know the composition of the group in order to determine:
- which rates apply
- whether the activity is available
- how the final price should be calculated
Instead of simply returning products that match a keyword, the API must immediately validate whether a product can accommodate that specific group configuration.
This means availability and pricing logic need to be applied much earlier in the search process.
2. Standalone purchase vs packaged travel
Another key difference between B2C and B2B environments lies in the role that experiences play in the booking process.
In most consumer platforms, an activity is often the main product being purchased.
The traveler is browsing experiences as the central element of the decision-making process.
But in B2B environments, experiences are frequently just one component of a larger travel package. This is particularly true for large tour operators and packaging platforms that assemble thousands of travel packages every day, combining flights, accommodation and experiences within a single booking flow.
That package may already include:
- flights
- accommodation
- transfers
- insurance
The activity needs to fit smoothly into the itinerary.
In this context, the seller — typically a travel agent, a tour operator system or a dynamic packaging engine — is not looking for dozens of similar options to explore.
They need:
- clear choices
- reliable availability
- quick booking flows
Efficiency becomes much more important than discovery.
Too many options slow down the process of building a travel itinerary.
3. Pricing logic
Pricing structures are another area where the differences between B2C and B2B distribution become very clear.
In B2C marketplaces, prices are normally displayed per person and per ticket type.
The final price is calculated gradually as the traveler selects the number of participants and ticket categories. So the checkout process determines the final total.
In B2B distribution, this model is often impractical.
Travel agents and packaging systems usually need an immediate quote for the entire group. For large tour operators managing high booking volumes, obtaining a clear group price in a single response is essential to maintain fast itinerary building and automated packaging workflows.
Instead of calculating the price step by step, the API must return a result such as:
Total price for this group: €186
This allows the agent to quickly evaluate whether the activity fits within the overall travel package.
Group pricing simplifies the booking process and reduces the risk of manual calculation errors.
4. Product structure and content
Consumer platforms typically have internal teams dedicated to optimizing product listings.
These teams manage:
- content quality
- product mapping
- pricing rules
- catalogue organization
Many B2B distributors do not have this level of internal product management. Instead, they depend directly on the structure and quality of supplier data.
This means APIs must deliver products that are already well organized and easy to interpret.
A clear hierarchy helps ensure smooth integrations:
Product
→ Modality
→ Rates by age group
If this structure is inconsistent or ambiguous, it becomes much harder for distributors to integrate and maintain the catalogue.
5. Choice vs clarity
In B2C environments, offering many alternatives can be beneficial.
A traveler browsing an OTA may appreciate seeing several different options for the same attraction.
But in B2B environments, the situation is different.
Travel agents rarely have time to evaluate dozens of nearly identical products. This becomes even more critical for large-scale distributors whose systems may process thousands of itinerary searches per hour.
When building travel itineraries, they need:
- clear options
- consistent product structures
- minimal duplication
Presenting 20 or 30 similar products for the same attraction often creates confusion rather than value.
In B2B distribution, clarity is far more useful than abundance.
What a B2B-ready API should provide (how tour operators sell experiences)
If the tours and activities sector is to scale effectively within the B2B ecosystem, APIs need to be designed around the operational needs of travel distribution. Several capabilities are particularly important. This is particularly important for global tour operators, wholesalers and large distribution platforms whose technology infrastructure must support large product catalogues and complex packaging logic.
Retail and net pricing
B2B distribution requires flexibility in pricing structures. Some distributors operate with retail prices, while others prefer to work with net rates and apply their own margins.
For this reason, APIs should support both:
- retail rates
- net rates
This flexibility allows distributors to integrate products into their own commercial strategies without additional technical complexity.
Group-based search and pricing
A B2B API must be able to return results based on group composition.
This means the system should:
- validate applicable rates
- confirm availability
- calculate the total price for the group
Ideally, all of this information should be returned within a single response.
Without this functionality, booking workflows become slower and more complex.
Clear product–modality–rate structures
Product information should follow a consistent hierarchy.
A typical structure would be:
Product
→ Modality
→ Rates
Each rate should correspond to a clearly defined age category.
Simple and predictable structures make integrations easier and reduce operational errors.
Simplicity in rate configurations
Overly complex rate structures should be avoided whenever possible.
Examples of complexity that often creates problems include:
- overlapping discounts
- inconsistent age brackets
- multiple special pricing categories
While these structures may seem attractive from a commercial perspective, they often complicate integrations and booking flows.
In B2B distribution, simpler pricing structures tend to scale more effectively.
This is clear product structure, ready for B2B distribution:
This is an example of a product that simply can’t be distributed to B2B wholesalers and tour operators:
Clear definition of age ranges
Age categories must always be clearly defined.
For example:
- Adult: 18+
- Child: 6–17
- Infant: 0–5
Without clear definitions, booking engines cannot reliably calculate prices for different group configurations.
Standardized passenger data requirements
Booking workflows should request only the information that is strictly necessary.
Excessive mandatory questions slow down booking processes and create friction for travel agents.
Passenger data fields should be standardized whenever possible, and additional mandatory questions should be minimized.
Clear pickup point structures
For tours that involve transportation or meeting points, pickup information should follow a clear and consistent structure.
This includes:
- predefined pickup locations
- standardized descriptions
- clear time references
Inconsistent pickup information is one of the most common sources of operational issues in experience bookings.
Multi-item booking capability
B2B transactions often include multiple products within a single itinerary.
For example, a travel package may include:
- accommodation
- transfers
- experiences
An API should ideally support multi-item booking workflows or, at minimum, provide predictable and fast response times when bookings are made sequentially.
Instant voucher delivery
Once a booking is confirmed, the voucher or ticket should be generated immediately.
This is particularly important when experiences are part of larger travel packages.
Delivering documentation instantly ensures that agents can finalize the itinerary without additional manual steps.
Intelligent product selection
One of the biggest challenges in the experiences industry today is product duplication. Multiple suppliers may offer similar tickets for the same attraction.
For B2B distribution, APIs should ideally return:
- a single relevant option
or - a small curated set of options
instead of dozens of nearly identical products.
Reducing duplication helps simplify integrations and improves booking accuracy.
The opportunity ahead
The tours and activities sector still has enormous growth potential. Demand continues to expand as travelers increasingly seek memorable experiences as part of their trips. But scaling this growth across the global travel ecosystem requires infrastructure that reflects how the industry actually operates.
B2B distribution remains a critical channel connecting travelers with experiences around the world. Travel agencies, wholesalers and packaging platforms continue to play an essential role in building complex itineraries that combine flights, accommodation and activities. Large tour operators and wholesalers remain some of the most important buyers of experiences globally, integrating activities into millions of travel packages each year.
For this ecosystem to function efficiently, the underlying technology must evolve.
APIs designed primarily for consumer discovery do not always match the operational needs of professional travel distribution.
Without the right infrastructure, experiences risk being perceived as:
- difficult to integrate
- operationally inconsistent
- technically complex
And when that happens, a significant part of their market potential remains untapped.
Building better infrastructure for the experiences industry
At Globick, we see these challenges every day. Connectivity is not simply about linking systems together, it is about ensuring that those connections work efficiently for the people who rely on them. Many of the integrations we work with involve large-scale distributors and tour operators whose operational requirements are very different from those of consumer marketplaces.
For B2B distribution, this means APIs designed for:
- clarity
- speed
- reliability
When connectivity works properly, the benefits extend across the entire ecosystem:
- Suppliers reach new markets.
- Distributors simplify integrations.
- Travel agents build itineraries more efficiently.
- Travelers enjoy richer travel experiences.
The growth of the experiences sector will continue in the years ahead. But unlocking its full potential requires technology that understands a fundamental difference: browsing an experience is not the same as building a trip around it.
Unveiling the Experiences API Integration Checklist: Not all integrations are the same
Unveiling the Experiences API Integration Checklist: Not all integrations are the same
Have you ever been in a situation where it's difficult to compare and choose between two software solutions?
They may publicize a vague capabilities list, identical to any other system on the surface, then realize after putting it to work that you should have made a more in-depth analysis.
Likewise, in the intricate world of systems integration, making choices can often feel like comparing two cars. Superficially, they might share standard features, but the fine details set them apart.
Integrating a reseller and a booking reservation system API is no different. It's a process where the devil is truly in the details. This is where our new tool, the "Experiences API Integration Checklist," comes into play. We're about to introduce you to this resource to raise awareness about all there is to integrations.
No, not all integrations are the same.
Introducing the Experiences API Integration Checklist
The Experiences API Integration Checklist is not just another document – it's your trusty guide through the system integration maze. It has been meticulously crafted to guide summarizing all the options involved in this process. It's designed with Product, Supply, or IT teams of resellers and distributors in mind, ensuring that it can be used to benchmark their current state against a comprehensive list of options.
It can also be a valuable tool for reservation systems builders to check what features the resellers expect on their APIs.
Why It Matters
If we pretend it to be a valuable tool for the mentioned people, we must outline why it is essential and how to use it.
- Selling All Kinds of Products: The beauty of a well-integrated system is that it allows you to sell myriad products. Be it a free sale or time-slotted, on request, or in real-time booking confirmation, with or without pick-ups and with or without passenger information requirements, the checklist ensures a flexible, scalable framework to accommodate various product types. This flexibility empowers you to expand your offerings, attracting a broader customer base and increasing revenue streams.
- Removing Manual Processes: The tedium of manual processes can significantly drain resources. Automation is the future, and efficient automated procedures through integration can help reduce or eliminate manual labor. The checklist identifies areas where automation can replace manual efforts, reduce costs, improve accuracy, and free your team to focus on more strategic tasks.
Let's take price ingestion as an example: it is a significant effort to update all sessions and rates pricing manually.
- Streamlining Operations with Suppliers: The heart of many businesses lies in their relationships with suppliers. A smoothly integrated system means minimizing gaps and managing orders efficiently. The "Integration Checklist" is your ticket to seeing all there is to a streamlined supplier-reseller collaboration.
We can discuss issues like booking cancellations, content updates, or the use of net pricing in reconciliation processes.
How to use it
The checklist is organized into ten sections, covering the main parts of an API integration.
You can then select what features of each section you currently have implemented for every integration.
You can also check a score in percentage points to compare between integrations.
We believe that collective wisdom can enhance the "Integration Checklist." We invite you to contribute to this tool. This is only a humble 1.0 version with much room for improvement, for sure. If the industry finds it useful, new updates will come. Your experiences, insights, and suggestions can help us make the checklist even more comprehensive. If you feel we've missed something important or have recommendations for improvements, we'd love to hear from you.
Now, it's time for action. We invite you to download the "Integration Checklist" and explore its content. Please share it with your network, especially with those who work in the integration field. Your involvement is crucial in further refining this tool and making it even more effective. To contribute your insights or suggestions, please get in touch with us through our contact page Globick .
You can also use the checklist in a one-page format. Downloadable here
