Airbnb enhances API and creates proactive communications for vacation rental software developers

Today, Airbnb is taking yet another step to make it easier for professional vacation rental managers to add their entire inventory of supply to the company’s marketplace.

Earlier this year, Airbnb publicly announced its commitment to expand its focus beyond host-managed listings to market professionally managed vacation rentals, boutique hotels, and bed and breakfast lodging alternatives.

As part of its commitment to add more professionally managed vacation rentals to its marketplace, the company has built an Airbnb API (Application Programming Interface) to connect with vacation rental software companies around the globe. Using the API, vacation rental managers are able to add their entire inventory of vacation homes to Airbnb immediately instead of adding and servicing one property at a time.

Today, Airbnb will begin to further facilitate and expedite these integrations with communications that proactively provide vacation rental software developers with additional resources, including its inaugural API newsletter that highlights improvements to the Airbnb API, new tools, and overall improvements (see below).

According to Airbnb technology and B2B communications executive Tim Rathschmidt, “As part of that [commitment], we’ve been expanding our work with third-party software partners that professional hosts use to connect to Airbnb’s API.”

“We already have more than 100 integrations complete, with many more in the works,” said Rathschmidt.

Rathschmidt added, “The professional host API is free to access. It’s not open, per se, as we work with each software provider requesting access to ensure they meet our API requirements, i.e. security standards, etc.”

Airbnb’s new communications tool for software providers includes:

New Tools

• Events dashboard to help monitor Airbnb integrations in real time: “Our new Events Dashboard provides visibility into your integration’s health so you can proactively address connectivity issues.”
• Test sandbox: “A test application that closely mimics your live production app and allows you to safely test new code before deploying to production.”

Overall API Improvements

• Faster publishing for professional hosts who aren’t already managing listings directly on Airbnb: “New listings added through your software are now automatically published without the need to visit the Sync page.”
• Merging and syncing: A new API features allows users to merge existing listings and select sync settings directly in the software system. No more navigating to Airbnb to publish, even when connecting to an existing account.
• Simplifying listing registrations: “We’re enabling a seamless transfer of listing registration info to Airbnb in markets that require it. Add registration details directly in your system and automatically sync this data to Airbnb listings.” This feature is live now for Japan and support for other markets will be released shortly.