Holibob's SDK Press Coverage

Demand was never the problem

Travolution led with the line Craig used to explain why we built it: "For most brands, it was never demand that was missing. It was the build."

Travel brands already know their customers spend on tours, restaurants and shows once the trip is booked. Around 70% of activity bookings happen in the week before travel, while the brand is still emailing them about the flight or the room. The project to sell into that week rarely gets past the engineering queue, and that is what has kept most brands out.

PhocusWire picked up that the SDK is free to build with and live in sandbox now. Breaking Travel News carried the wider numbers, including the 35% higher repeat booking rate among brands that sell the whole trip. Short Term Rentalz wrote it up for accommodation operators, for whom the confirmation and pre-arrival emails are the obvious place to start.

An engineer outside travel put it better than we did

The piece we've reread most came from outside the travel press. Christopher Mitchell of MitchellCo wrote about how SDKs should be designed and used ours as his main example. His phrase for it was "a paved road with exits".

His argument is that a good SDK makes the common path quick without trapping you on it. When you need something it doesn't do, you should be able to step off and work with the API directly, without starting again.

That was the design decision we argued about most while building it. Every Holibob element calls the same operations the API documents, through a proxy on your own server. You can use the whole storefront, take individual elements, or skip them and call the API yourself. If you outgrow the parts we've built, there's nothing to migrate.

He also suggests SDK makers should measure where developers leave the paved road, rather than how many start on it. We think he's right, and it's what we'll be watching.

Three days, tested in public

Over the coming weeks we'll publish a build log: one engineer, our public documentation, a stopwatch, and a plain account of where it slowed down. The parts that don't flatter us go in too.

The sandbox runs on production

You don't have to wait for the build log to find out. The sandbox runs against our production systems, so a developer has the full catalogue, real availability and the whole booking flow on day one. Test cards act out success, failure and a bank challenge. Confirmation emails and vouchers go out as they would for a real booking, and cancellations and amendments work. Two things are held back: the supplier is never contacted, and nothing reaches a bank.

When a commercial agreement is in place, we clear the sandbox flag. The same credentials, proxy and code then take real bookings, so the three days your developer spends building is the whole engineering cost.

You can click through the storefront at demo.holibob.tech/solutions/holibob-sdk. For sandbox credentials, book fifteen minutes with us at holibob.tech/holibob-sdk, where you'll also find the FAQ.

All the coverage

Every piece from launch week, in the order it was published:

• Travolution: Holibob launches Software Development Kit to cut integration times to days
• PhocusWire: Holibob launches software development kit for embedding experiences storefronts
• Breaking Travel News: Holibob launches SDK that cuts experience-booking integration from six months to three days
• Short Term Rentalz: Holibob launches toolkit for embedded experience bookings
• MitchellCo: Christopher Mitchell on SDK product strategy