Booking.com Taxi Public API Access (Connect to API)

We are very excited to announce that the Taxi Public API is now ready for you to integrate in to your system. The new Public API will enable a much more efficient and high-quality experience for you, reducing manual administration and overheads when managing your bookings. 

Our Taxi Public API is a REST-based interface designed to save you operational effort by connecting your dispatching systems directly with us, allowing you to manage the assignment of work as you do on a day to day basis. You are able to accept, cancel, update bookings and assign drivers directly from your own system.

What does the Taxi Public API look like?

The following features are available on the API:

1. Retrieve all bookings (in Booked_date descending order)
2. Retrieve a single booking, using the booking ID
3. Receive notifications for new and cancelled bookings (webhook)
4. Send a response (accept or reject) to the booking
5. Assign a driver to the booking
6. Share vehicle and driver information (driver photo, vehicle model, vehicle registration...)
7. Send Driver Events with LAT/LONG for the booking
8. Send full GPS driver tracking
9. Manage your rates via API sharing your price for a journey via search webhook
10. Send pickup instructions by booking with images
11. Collect quality metrics (incidents / surveys)

For all features please check this article.

Benefits to connect to the Taxi Public API :

• Manage bookings in own dispatching system
• Reduces operational work
• Reduces administration errors
• Last-minute updates delivered directly into the partner system, direct to driver (i.e. flight numbers, passenger details)
• Lower lead times are possible (more demand)
• Own driver app can be used - driver no longer needs multiple apps!
• Larger volumes can be handled

API Documentation can be found here 

We would advise to consider the integration if you can respond yes to these 2 questions:

1) Can your technical team not only connect to our API but also maintain the integration? ( we discourage building homemade quick solutions to then integrate, both booking and dispatch systems and API integrations need maintenance through time.)

2) Are you planning to integrate your driver app via API or at least integrate your system to use our driver app? (Driver events are an essential part of been a Booking.com Transfer provider, more info here)

How to Integrate to our API

Once your technical team (or your 3rd party dispatch system department) has reviewed the API documentation, please open a ticket to request your sandbox access and production API keys. (contact us > technical question > api related > connect to the API)

For any technical query please always use our ticketing system (I have a technical question for developers > API related).

You also find several articles on the API integration here.

Please note: We expect your developers to connect your system to our API. We cannot do the integration for you and connect your system to ours.

Do I still have access to the Portal?

You will keep access to the Portal and still receive email booking notifications. The same bookings you will have via API will be available on the Portal. Portal and emails will be your backup in case any outage happens to the API.

Please note: if you integrate via API, we discourage the use of the Portal to accept new bookings, add drivers. If this happens, your API integration needs to consider this scenario in order to not miss bookings already accepted via Portal.

Which dispatch systems are already connected?

A dispatch system allows a private hire/taxi/VTC company to manage all operations (booking management, dispatch vehicles, invoicing, driver wages, reporting, driver app) in one system.

We are working to have all major dispatch systems to fully connect to our API. 

Please find below the currently connected systems that allows our partners to meet the foundational requirements:

- manage our bookings

- assign the drivers

- send us driver events via the dispatch driver APP (not Booking.com driver APP)

Some of these systems also allow partners to manage their rates via API and have additional features integrated or that they are planning to integrate. 

If you don't already have a system, or are looking to upgrade your current solution, you may want to consider these (A-Z order).

Please note that there are many other dispatch systems out there on the market that you can choose from. Once you have found your perfect fit, ask them to integrate to our API.