API orchestration is the process of automating business operations by connecting and coordinating multiple systems through APIs. For the hospitality industry, where most hotels rely on 50 to 100+ systems, orchestrations are essential. These workflows enable seamless communication across systems, ensuring smooth operations and an enhanced guest experience. Any hotel that wants its numerous systems to work together effectively requires orchestrations.
Real-World Examples of API Orchestrations in Hospitality
API orchestrations are more than just technical jargon—they are authentic, actionable workflows that improve operations. Here are some examples of how they can transform hotel operations:
- Advance Payment Collection: Automatically collect 50% of the reservation amount 7 days before a guest’s arrival.
- Automated Price Adjustment: Leveraging algorithms to review future room prices against industry benchmarks and past performance, providing actionable recommendations to revenue managers.
- Profile Synchronization: Enabling synchronization of guest profiles from multiple PMS instances into a central CRM and loyalty system.
- Bundled Sales: Facilitating the sale of packages that include services like golf, spa treatments, meal packages, and room reservations through a resort’s IBE.
- Membership Lookups: Ensuring discounts are automatically applied by fetching member information from a PMS or POS based on membership status.
These examples demonstrate how orchestrations optimize operations and create unparalleled guest experiences. They represent just a few examples of hundreds of potential use cases that can transform hotel operations.
Why API Orchestrations Are Essential
API orchestrations are the backbone of modern hotel operations. Automating repetitive tasks, reducing errors, and ensuring data consistency help hotels save time and resources while enhancing guest experiences. They also enable capabilities that are simply not feasible manually, such as allowing guests to book services and amenities online. For hotels with dozens of interconnected systems, orchestrations provide the agility to adapt to evolving business needs and stay competitive.
Important Considerations
In order to implement effective API orchestrations, intentional design and collaboration between IT and business leadership are crucial. These workflows are critical business operations and must be treated with the same rigor as other essential services. Given the complexity of integrating 50 or more systems—each with its domain-specific expertise—careful planning is necessary. Additionally, orchestrations have a long lifespan and will be maintained and enhanced by various teams over time. This longevity demands a robust and adaptable approach.
Realities of API Orchestration in Hospitality
Integration challenges in the hospitality industry often stem from resource constraints and fragmented approaches. Small to midsize hotels rarely have dedicated integration teams, relying instead on general IT professionals or specialist contractors. This can lead to a proliferation of platforms as different system integration partners use their preferred tools, resulting in a fragmented ecosystem. Fragile integrations, prone to failures, often cause data loss and operational disruptions. Hotels may also depend on specific vendors, which can be frustrating if the relationship sours. While off-the-shelf platforms like MuleSoft or Workato offer manageability and operational solutions, they add complexity and cost and introduce another dependency on platform-specific experts who are not domain experts in Hospitality and the specific systems being integrated. Specialized services like HAPI address common integrations for many core systems as a service but require sacrificing customization and flexibility, leaving a gap in the hotelier’s comprehensive integration strategy.
Principles for Doing It Right
For hotels aiming to overcome these challenges, the following principles for success can serve as a benchmark. Getting these elements right is critical to ensuring API orchestrations’ long-term effectiveness and sustainability, which are pivotal for operational success.
- Focus on Operations: Prioritize maintenance, management, and evolution over development. Ensure that integrations are easy for new developers to take over and that they are equipped with diagnostics and alerts for operational continuity.
- Avoid Vendor & Partner Lock-In: Select platforms or approaches that are universally applicable and provide the flexibility to switch developers or in-house work in the future. Select partners that understand this and are ok with it.
- Collaboration Platform: Select or create a system where domain experts can easily collaborate, ensuring critical knowledge is automatically captured during implementation and available for future developers who inherit the orchestration.
- Simplify and Standardise Development: Select or create a platform that makes development straightforward and intuitive. The bulk of time should be spent on design and dependency collection. Developers should be able to quickly implement orchestrations while maintaining high-quality standards.
- Secure and Scalable Infrastructure: Ensure that infrastructure concerns like security, performance, and scalability are implicitly solved, minimizing risks and operational disruptions. Developers should not have to worry about the infra, and your security team should not worry about accidental credential compromise.
- Leverage Integration as a Service Provider: Where possible, leverage integration-as-a-service providers if the cost justifies it. Avoid building every integration as a custom solution. Focus custom development efforts on critical workflows that significantly impact your hotel operations and cannot be achieved effectively with off-the-shelf solutions.
When evaluating solutions, ensure that any platform vendor provides clear views and supporting evidence for these principles. Additionally, any implementation partner should explicitly detail their approach to leveraging your selected platform and addressing these considerations. This level of transparency and alignment is crucial to ensure that the chosen solution meets your operational needs and long-term goals and that implementation partners do not deviate from your desired approach.
Connect With Us
If you’re interested in learning how we tackle these challenges in hospitality, particularly for hoteliers seeking a trusted partner to assist with API orchestration, reach out to us at hello@polyapi.io. We pride ourselves on tackling the most complex challenges and ensuring you get the tailored solutions to power your business. Let’s shape the future of API orchestration together.