I spent 6 months building a white label travel portal. Integrated 50+ APIs for flights, hotels, and buses. Here's what actually happened.
1. Every Travel API is Different (And Annoying)
The Problem:
API #1 wants dates as DD-MM-YYYY
API #2 demands YYYY-MM-DD
API #3 only accepts Unix timestamps
API #4 invented their own format (seriously)
One API required airport codes in UPPERCASE or it would crash. Another needed passenger count as a string "2" instead of number 2.
The Solution:
Built adapter layers for each API. They translate our standard format into whatever weird format each API expects. Tedious but necessary.
Lesson: Budget 3x more time than you think for API integrations.
2. Speed Makes or Breaks You
My First Demo:
Client: "Search Delhi to Mumbai flights"
12 seconds later...
Client: "Too slow. Fix it."
The Journey:
Day 1: Calling 15 APIs one by one = 12 seconds
Week 1: Parallel API calls = 2.1 seconds
Week 2: Added Redis caching = 800ms average
Month 1: Pre-cached popular routes = 200ms for common searches
Lesson: In travel booking, anything over 2 seconds kills conversions. Cache everything aggressively.
3. APIs Will Fail at the Worst Times
2 AM Saturday:
Phone explodes with alerts. Biggest hotel API is down. 200+ customers seeing errors.
Reality Check:
Third-party APIs don't care about your uptime. They'll crash during your busiest hours.
My Solution:
3-4 backup providers for every service
If 5 APIs fail, show results from the 10 that work
2-second timeout on everything
Circuit breakers to stop calling dead APIs
Real-time health dashboard for all 50 APIs
Lesson: Build for failure, not success. Always have backup providers.
4. India-Specific Challenges Nobody Mentions
Payment Gateways:
Integrated 5 different gateways (Razorpay, Paytm, CCAvenue, etc.) because:
Different success rates for different banks
Customers trust different gateways
Need backups when one fails
GST Complexity:
Domestic flights: 5% GST
Hotels: 12-18% depending on price
Service charges taxed differently
Getting it wrong = angry customers + compliance issues
IRCTC (Train Booking):
Spent 2 months just getting trains to work. Their API documentation is from 2010 and the testing environment behaves differently from production.
Lesson: India requires extra infrastructure. Budget accordingly.
5. The Real Costs (What I Didn't Expect)
What I Budgeted:
Development: ₹15 lakhs
Servers: ₹50k/month
APIs: ₹1 lakh/month
What I Actually Spent:
Development: ₹28 lakhs (nearly 2x)
Servers: ₹1.5 lakhs/month
APIs: ₹3.5 lakhs/month
Monitoring tools: ₹40k/month
24/7 support team: ₹2 lakhs/month
SMS/Email: ₹50k/month
Payment gateway fees: 2-3% per transaction
The Hidden Killers:
₹2-5 per API search call (adds up fast with volume)
Server costs spike during sales
Failed transaction handling overhead
Refund processing costs
Honest ROI:
Total investment: ₹45 lakhs
Monthly revenue: ₹8-12 lakhs
Monthly costs: ₹6 lakhs
Break-even: Month 14
Current: Profitable, growing 25% monthly
Lesson: Travel margins are thin. You make money on volume, not per-transaction.
Key Strategies:
Started with 5 reliable APIs, added more gradually
Cached aggressively from day one
Built mobile-first (70% of our traffic)
Automated refunds and support workflows
Monitored everything in real-time
Should You Build One?
Build it if:
You have ₹30-50 lakhs to invest
Can wait 12-18 months for ROI
Have technical team who can handle complex integrations
Understand travel industry margins are 2-8%
Don't build it if:
Expecting quick returns
Thinking it's "just another booking site"
Can't handle 24/7 operations
Don't have budget for failures and iterations
Final Thoughts
Building a travel platform taught me more about resilience, system design, and business reality than any other project.
Is it profitable? Yes.
Was it worth the stress? Barely.
Would I do it again? Knowing what I know now, probably yes.
The travel industry in India is huge and growing. There's room for innovation. But go in with eyes wide open about the complexity and costs.
Questions? Drop them in the comments. Happy to share more specific details about any aspect.
Building something similar? Learn from my mistakes. Feel free to reach out.
Tags: #webdev #startup #india #api #travel #entrepreneurship
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