Understanding the Search Webhook¶
What does it do?¶
A search is performed to retrieve a price for a single trip between two locations.
The search webhook within our Public API enables us to retrieve prices for journeys with our Supply Partners, enabling us to provide our customers with accurate pricing information.
The search webhook also allows partners to set up Genius discounts, which are special discounts for Booking.com's most loyal and high-value customers. By integrating this API, partners can target high-value travelers and potentially increase their bookings.
Why use it?¶
In order for us to provide a price for a journey we need to be able to query our Supply Partners for rates. If you want your rates to be available to Booking.com Taxi, you must implement our search webhook.
Offering Genius discounts can help partners access a vast customer base of Genius travelers, who are more likely to book rides and leave reviews. This can improve the partner's performance metrics and overall visibility on the platform.
How does it work?¶
Once you’ve implemented the search webhook contract, you’ll need to provide us with the URI. Booking.com Taxi will then send you a search request, the payload will contain all the information you need to calculate the price of a trip between two locations. You’ll then need to respond to our request with a search “response” containing a single rate, per transportCategory. At airport pickup locations this rate should include meet & greet costs.
Note
To preserve customer experience there is a limit on response time to search requests of 5 seconds. Any results returned after this will not be included in search results. However, as per the SLA outlined in the commercial agreement, we do expect you to respond in under 2.5 seconds.
It’s important to note that we only guarantee a latitude and longitude will be sent with each request, address parts (e.g. street name, city, post/zip code) will only be provided when available. With that in mind, you should use the latitude and longitude to calculate the rate only using the address parts if required for additional context.
Your API should be served via HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate. We currently support the bearer authentication scheme for the webhooks. You will need to provide us with a long-lived token which we will send in the “Authorization” header when calling the endpoint on your server.
Note
The Search Webhook will authenticate for every request - it is recommended to bear this in mind before setting up any rate limiting logic.
