Frequently Asked Questions

Trip Ninja has codified senior-level travel agent knowledge in our easy-to-use API. Our SmartFlights API uses various features to compose better itineraries using your content, to save your customers money, and earn you more revenue on your flights bookings.

Specifically, our FareStructure feature creates better multi-city itineraries than the GDS 89% of the time, our Virtual Interlining feature increases connection opportunities to compose cheaper, more flexible, and profitable itineraries, and our Dynamic Packaging feature builds multi-city packages with incredible value in real-time, using package-only flight fares and opaque hotel rates.

Our API is powered by proprietary machine learning technology to increase your revenue per search with only 2 API calls, and in less than 2 seconds. It’s like having a senior-level travel agent diligently working on each applicable itinerary.

Our sophisticated technology empowers you to use your existing content sources in a smarter, more profitable way. We use advanced machine-learning algorithms to identify the most efficient queries and configurations of your content to split ticket, virtually interline, or dynamically build packages. This allows you to fulfill more of your traveller's demands with less cost and complexity.

Since we integrate within your booking infrastructure without emulation, our API supports all of your content sources, including GDS, NDC, and LCC content.

Trip Ninja provides search guidance and itinerary composition, so you can maintain your relationships with your content providers. With this in mind, we don’t specialize in any content source, or segment by market, and our technology works anywhere in the world.

There are many highly skilled and successful companies providing content solutions (and we'd be happy to provide introductions), but Trip Ninja's strengths are in building tech products that solve complex configuration products. We know every OTA has their own mix of content, so we built the technology to best leverage whatever content you have.

Connect with our sales team to learn more about how Trip Ninja can improve your flights offerings. Once we are ready to integrate, a member of our Customer Success team will provide you with the documentation, code snippets, and a technical readiness checklist to help you begin an API integration.

Absolutely! We’ve included our machine-learning based Revenue Management tool for free with every API integration to help OTAs capitalize on the improved itineraries composed using our FareStructure and Virtual Interlining features, but it is not necessary to provide improved itineraries. To discuss a search-only pricing structure that makes sense for your business, contact our Sales team.

Given our emulation-less integration structure, the data source queries are within your control and you can apply any filters at that stage that make sense for your business. We encourage you to review our API documentation or speak with a member of our team for more information.

Multi-PNR is the ability to process a booking containing multiple PNRs. This is often the result of doing split ticketing.

Both of Trip Ninja's features, Virtual Interlining and FareStructure, carry out split ticketing but in different ways. This is essential to using Trip Ninja's capabilities to lower prices.

Virtual Interlining carries out split ticketing in one-way, round-trip, and open-jaw itineraries by splitting the ticket at a connection point. This allows us to take advantage of different carriers flying in and out of that connection for better pricing. The split is at a connection in the customer's journey.

FareStructure carries out split ticketing for 2 or more segment itineraries (multi-city). FareStructure splits the itinerary into multiple tickets at the destination points, where the customer is spending one or more nights. In the same way as virtual interlining, it allows us to take advantage of different carriers flying in and out of that destination for better pricing. The split is at one or more destinations in the customer's journey.

Our API products are usable by any travel platform - whether it is managed in-house or by a 3rd party IBE provider. The only difference is implementation will take place by the IBE provider and contracting/content consumption agreements need to be worked out by the 3 parties. Our sales team will be happy to host a call with your IBE to discuss integration requirements.

Integrations are simple and straightforward. An average integration will take about 1 month of development time from 1-2 dedicated technical resources, including testing and certification. Trip Ninja will provide a technical resource to aid with troubleshooting and technical support.

Setting up our products on your platform is easy! Establishing connection to the endpoints for our API is defined in our documentation and supported by code snippets and a testing sandbox. Getting your platform to production status is as simple as completing our connection certification check and swapping out your testing API key to a production key.

Our products employ a proprietary machine-learning system to ensure that Look-to-Book constraints are managed appropriately. No matter how many content sources you use, our system actively learns and improves your ability to find better prices while avoiding unnecessary and costly queries.

FareStructure automates split ticketing of complex flight searches, resulting in itineraries that are less expensive than the GDS 89% of the time. This creates a markup opportunity as well as an opportunity for increased conversions. Managing the balance between increasing conversions and increasing markup is handled by Trip Ninja's machine-learning markup generation system that determines the optimal markup to apply, maximizing revenue per search.

Our FareStructure feature is designed to provide immense value on complex itineraries with 3 or more segments. If you are considering adding a multi-city booking feature to your platform, we highly recommend it! Did you know that multi-city flights tend to produce more than 2-3x the revenue of a standard round trip? Our expert sales team will be happy to help you evaluate if offering multi-city flights makes sense for your business. Successful implementation of FareStructure will require that you are able to develop and support a multi-city flights search to booking flow interface on your platform and process multiple PNR creations for one itinerary.

Virtual Interlining is the process of combining non-interlined flights (i.e. flights from separate airlines that do not have a carrying agreement) into a single itinerary - often in the service of transporting a traveller at a significant discount. Virtual Interlining takes 2 (or more) shorter, individual flights and combines them into an itinerary that is, in aggregate, cheaper than what a traveller might find on offer from Full-Service Carriers and their respective alliances.

For example, for a trip from New York City to Barcelona, one might only be presented with an expensive itinerary from one Alliance partner. Virtual Interlining would automatically create alternative combinations of that Alliance partner flight between New York and a Hub (such as London) and LCC flights between that Hub and Barcelona. This combination of flights will form an itinerary that is less expensive than the traditionally interlined itineraries generated by GDSs and other content sources.

Virtual interlining can also substantially increase the number of flight options between two airports and can be useful if only a handful of flight connections exist but the customer wants different departure times or connections.

Although it isn't a hard technical requirement to have multiple content sources, Virtual Interlining really only begins to yield value when at least 2 content sources are integrated. Virtual Interlining's strength is its ability to mix-and-match between airline alliances and it needs variable content to do this effectively.

Virtually Interlined itineraries are frequently (and often significantly) cheaper than their standard itinerary counterparts. An OTA can capitalize on these virtually interlined itineraries by absorbing most (but not all) of the pricing discrepancies through the application of dynamically generated markups. Trip Ninja's Virtual Interlining product is paired with our machine-learning powered markup generation system, ensuring that your itineraries are positioned to maximize revenues and conversions.

Virtual Interlining is an excellent way to utilize the full scope of your flights content to offer more flexible and less expensive itineraries to your customers. That said, there is inherent risk for missed connections and cancelled flights in any virtually interlined itineraries. This risk is the responsibility of the traveller but is often passed onto the OTA as an extension of excellent customer service. Trip Ninja's Virtual Interlining product offers risk mitigation by having the OTA set their preferred minimum connecting times so you can offer itineraries to your customers that align with your risk tolerance and customer service preferences.