6 min read
A website that talks to your booking system
Most Icelandic tourism operators run two websites without meaning to. One is their own, with their design and their words. The other opens when the visitor presses Book, and looks like somebody else entirely.
What an embedded widget actually does
An embedded booking widget is an entire website inside your website. It fetches its own JavaScript, its own styling and its own data from another domain, after your page has already loaded. That is why you often see an empty box for a second or two before anything appears.
While that box is empty the visitor has reached the exact point where they were ready to buy. That is the most expensive second on the entire site.
What a direct connection means
A direct connection means your website asks the booking system itself, on the server, and renders the answer in your own design. The visitor sees availability, prices and times as part of the page, not as a window sitting on top of it.
The numbers are just as live as before. They come from the same system as before. What changes is who lays them out, and how long the visitor waits for them.
The payment does not have to move
The most common worry is that a direct connection means you start handling card data. It does not have to. Availability and prices are fetched on the server, but payment still completes at the booking provider, on their secure page.
That gets you the speed and the design without the PCI obligation moving onto you. It is the same arrangement larger travel companies use.
What it takes
One condition: your booking system has to offer an open interface. Most systems used by Icelandic tourism do, including the largest ones. If yours does not, the honest answer is no, and then an embedded widget is the right solution.
This is also a question you can answer yourself before talking to anyone. Search for the name of your system and the word API. If documentation exists, the answer is yes.
If your booking system has an open interface, the visitor never has to change websites to buy from you. If it does not, an embedded widget is the honest answer, and the work becomes making it load fast.