How to Use Traffic Optimizer
What is Traffic Optimizer?
Traffic Optimizer is an intelligent Travelgate tool that analyzes search data and automatically blocks non-converting hotels—eliminating unnecessary traffic, reducing overhead, and boosting marketplace connection efficiency.
Who Can Activate Traffic Optimizer?
Both Buyers and Sellers can enable Traffic Optimizer within Travelgate. It’s available for every connection regardless of the API used by the Buyer—it works with both the HotelX API and the Legacy API.
What Are the Benefits of Traffic Optimizer?
- Improve your Look-to-Book (L2B) ratio by filtering out low-converting searches.
- Reduce unnecessary search traffic, optimizing API performance and saving costs.
- Decrease response times, improving efficiency for both Buyers and Sellers.
How Does It Work?
Traffic Optimizer can be applied to either:
- A specific connection between a Buyer and a Seller.
- A particular access within a connection.
It uses a data-driven approach to analyze past transactions and automatically blacklist hotels that are not converting, based on selected optimization criteria:
No Availability
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Blocks hotels that returned 100% "no availability" results the previous day for all requested dates.
- Example: If searches for January 13th return 100% no availability, the hotel will be blacklisted on the following day (January 14th).
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If a hotel was not searched the previous day, it will not be considered for blocking. Only hotels that were requested are eligible to be blocked.
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Hotels blocked under this criteria receive a grace period to accept new searches, and will be unblocked automatically when availability is detected (following day).
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Grace period: Blocked hotels are given periodic opportunities to respond to searches:
- Each hour, a subset of blocked hotels is allowed to be requested.
- All blocked hotels are fully unblocked during two grace periods per day.
- A hotel is unblocked if it returns availability during any grace period.
Example:
Day What happens Day 1 "Hotel A" reports 100% no availability. Day 2 "Hotel A" is blocked, but the grace period allows it to respond to searches. Day 3 If "Hotel A" returned availability on Day 2 → stays unblocked. Otherwise → blocked again.
Zero Bookings
- Blocks hotels that have never recorded a booking with Travelgate.
- Hotels blocked under this criteria receive a grace period to accept new searches, and will be unblocked automatically when a booking is detected.
Quote Error
- Blocks hotels when their quote requests return errors at a rate that exceeds the configured threshold.
- This criteria evaluates the percentage of quote errors over a defined time window and only triggers after a minimum number of requests are received.
- You can customize the following settings:
- Percentage error: maximum tolerated error rate before blocking.
- Minimum requests: minimum number of quote requests needed before the rule is evaluated.
- Evaluation window hours: period used to calculate the error ratio.
- Block duration hours: how long the hotel remains blacklisted if the threshold is exceeded.
- Percentage error:
50% - Minimum requests:
5 - Evaluation window hours:
2h - Block duration hours:
2h
If you need a specific default configuration for your setup, please contact us.
Booking Error
- Blocks hotels when their booking requests fail at a rate that exceeds the configured threshold.
- This criteria evaluates the percentage of booking errors over a defined time window and only triggers after a minimum number of requests are received.
- You can customize the following settings:
- Percentage error: maximum tolerated error rate before blocking.
- Minimum requests: minimum number of booking requests needed before the rule is evaluated.
- Evaluation window hours: period used to calculate the error ratio.
- Block duration hours: how long the hotel remains blacklisted if the threshold is exceeded.
- Percentage error:
50% - Minimum requests:
2 - Evaluation window hours:
4h - Block duration hours:
2h
If you need a specific default configuration for your setup, please contact us.
Not in Portfolio
- Identifies and blocks hotel codes that are no longer offered by the Seller.
- A hotel must be requested before it becomes eligible for blocking. As a result, there may be a time gap between the first request and the actual blocking.
Price Increase
- Blocks hotels whose price increases from Avail to Quote at a rate that exceeds the configured threshold.
- The price returned in the Avail is compared against the price confirmed in the Quote. When a quote comes back more expensive than the Avail by at least the configured price deviation, that quote counts as an error.
- This criteria evaluates the percentage of affected quotes over a defined time window and only triggers after a minimum number of requests are received.
- A price increase means the Buyer is shown a higher price at Quote than at Avail, which can harm conversion and the end customer's experience.
- You can customize the following settings:
- Price deviation: how much more expensive the Quote must be than the Avail for that quote to count as an error.
- Percentage error: maximum tolerated ratio of affected quotes before blocking.
- Minimum requests: minimum number of quote requests needed before the rule is evaluated.
- Evaluation window hours: period used to calculate the error ratio.
- Block duration hours: how long the hotel remains blacklisted if the threshold is exceeded.
- Price deviation:
5% - Percentage error:
50% - Minimum requests:
20 - Evaluation window hours:
4h - Block duration hours:
2h
Price Decrease
- Blocks hotels whose price decreases from Avail to Quote at a rate that exceeds the configured threshold.
- Same comparison as Price Increase in the opposite direction: a quote that comes back cheaper than the Avail by at least the configured price deviation counts as an error.
- A large drop usually means the Avail price was not reliable, even though the final price favours the Buyer.
- You can customize the same settings as Price Increase: Price deviation, Percentage error, Minimum requests, Evaluation window hours and Block duration hours.
- Price deviation:
50% - Percentage error:
50% - Minimum requests:
20 - Evaluation window hours:
4h - Block duration hours:
2h
- Both criteria can be activated without specifying a configuration, in which case Travelgate's default thresholds are applied.
- Price deviation is always expressed as a positive value—the direction is given by the criteria itself. A 10% deviation means "10% more expensive" under Price Increase, and "10% cheaper" under Price Decrease.
- Each criteria keeps its own independent thresholds. For example, you can block a 10% price increase while still tolerating a 20% price decrease.
- The minimum deviation that can be configured is 1%. Price Decrease is capped at 100%, since a quote cannot get more than 100% cheaper, whereas Price Increase has no upper limit.
Example: block the hotel for 1 hour when, over the last 24 hours and with at least 80 requests, 80% of the quotes came back at least 10% more expensive than the Avail.
If you need a specific default configuration for your setup, please contact us.
Hotels that match these criteria are blacklisted, meaning searches for those properties will be blocked, reducing unnecessary traffic.
🚀 Daily Updates: The blacklist is refreshed every 24 hours, ensuring optimization is always up to date! Price-based criteria are re-evaluated more frequently, following the evaluation window and block duration you configure.