Exploring API Side-Hustle Ideas — Part 4: Travel APIs
Is now the perfect time to make a travel API?
This is part 4 of a multi-part series where I break down APIs and their marketplaces. In this part, I’ll cover APIs related to travel, what types of services exist, who they are aimed at, and some of my speculations for new APIs which could be successful in the future.
- Part 1: What is an API?
- Part 2: Sport APIs
- Part 3: Finance APIs
- Part 4: Travel APIs
- More Coming Soon…
Overview
There are great opportunities for innovation to be made across the travel sector. It is an ever-modernizing industry that has spawned countless billion-dollar start-ups. These companies can not change the world by themselves, could you provide a valuable service to someone in this sector? If you can, there’s a lot of money to be earned.
Understanding the end-user
As I’ve said previously, an API can only ever be successful if it can provide value to someone. The travel sector is vast, and there’s plenty of people which could be a target audience for an API. Understanding who’s problems you can solve is crucial, so I’ll quickly break down some of these audiences.
Travel Agents & Trip Organisers
A travel agent’s job has changed quite a bit in the past 20 or so years. Like most mediums, travel brochures have been replaced with websites and customers rarely go to a shop to book their next holiday. With this shift into the digital era, there are new possibilities to improve the experience for the traveler and the organizer. Could you make the process easier? Could you provide data to make the experience better?
Travel Platforms
Websites and services such as TripAdvisor are also constantly evolving. These are often global services, so more automation and outsourcing are key to improving their user’s experience. To give an example, Skyscanner may want to warn people traveling to countries that have certain restrictions. Maintaining a list of these countries and their restrictions have never been more time-consuming, so they may look to an external system that can provide this data.
Existing API’s
In normal times, the travel sector can provide great avenues for start-ups to thrive. Airbnb, Uber, and Skyscanner are just a fraction of the multi-billion-dollar travel startup club. We are certainly not in normal times, however, this could be seen as a great opportunity to get a foothold in the market whilst interest is low.
Hotel / Flight Price Checker
This is a huge marketplace in itself, with pre-established services such as Skyscanner providing comprehensive data. This is certainly far from a solved problem, however, especially with regards to hotels and accommodation.
Flight Data
“Where is flight X?” and “How long does it take to fly to Y?” are questions that entire apps could and have been built around. The challenge is maintaining this data in real-time, but if done correctly can be incredibly valuable to newcomers in the space.
World Webcams
Data provided by APIs does not necessarily have to be in text format. With advancements in backend infrastructures, it’s certainly possible to use the connection to stream data back to the user.
Vehicle Route Optimization / Route Planners
Finding the best route from A to B is an incredibly tough problem to solve. As such, good solutions can request an equally impressive price.
(Unusual) TSA Wait Times
Yet another example of taking publicly available data, making it easy to access, and requesting a small fee for your efforts. I’m not entirely sure where the use-cases for this particular example lie, but I’m sure someone finds it helpful.
Potential Ideas
Walk/Trail Finder
Who doesn’t enjoy a wander in the countryside? In my experience, finding a great trail often relies on recommendations from friends and the occasional blog post. There seems to be an opportunity to improve this, potentially via an app or website. If you’re hesitant to commit to the full project, there’s a perfect opportunity to stay behind the scenes, providing the data to power such services.
Country Covid Green List / Black List Data
With the ongoing Covid situation, countries are rapidly changing their border policies. From my personal experience, it’s almost impossible to keep up with these changes and it would take a lot of website-hopping to gain a full picture of where you can go for your next trip abroad. This is all public information, unique to each country, waiting to be accumulated and more easily distributed — a problem easily solved by an API.
City Event Data
What reliably happens when a large event gets scheduled for a city? Prices shoot up. Whether it’s transport, hotel, or even restaurants, the demand can suddenly spike. This is great for large businesses such as airlines as they have entire teams and specialized algorithms which can adjust prices and add extra flights automatically. For smaller businesses such as local hotels, it can be much more difficult to react to these random increases in demand. I envision a valuable market for an API that can track new events, their location, and the predicted increase in demand.
I hope this article has opened your eyes to some of the possibilities within API creation, and more specifically finance-related APIs. For further analysis of other marketplace areas, please check out the other parts of this series.
- Part 1: What is an API?
- Part 2: Sport APIs
- Part 3: Finance APIs
- Part 4: Travel APIs
- More Coming Soon…
