Key Takeaways
- A bed bank buys hotel rooms at net rates and resells them to travel businesses — software is the business.
- Four parts matter: contracting, mapping, distribution (XML API and B2B portal) and finance.
- Your buyers judge you on API reliability and response speed as much as on price.
- Start in one region with direct contracts, then add aggregated supply.
Bed bank software lets a hotel wholesaler load hotel contracts, rates, allotments and stop sales; map each property so it appears once; distribute that inventory to travel agencies, OTAs and tour operators through an XML or JSON API and a B2B booking portal; and handle invoicing, credit and supplier payments. TraveleXe combines Invento (contracting), Syncro (mapping), XML API Out (distribution), OneBook (B2B portal) and Ledgrex (accounting) for this.
A bed bank is a hotel wholesaler: it contracts or sources rooms at net rates and sells them on to travel businesses. Unlike an agency, its customers are other systems — they connect by API and expect fast, accurate answers. That makes the technology the core of the business.
The four parts of bed bank software
| Part | What it does | TraveleXe product |
|---|---|---|
| Contracting & inventory | Hotel contracts, seasonal rates, allotments, stop sales, release dates | Invento |
| Hotel mapping | One record per hotel and room across all sources | Syncro |
| Distribution | XML/JSON API for buyers, B2B portal for agents | XML API Out, OneBook |
| Finance | Invoices, buyer credit, supplier payables, margin reports | Ledgrex |
How to start a bed bank
A region or segment where you can get better rates than the big wholesalers.
Start with hotels that value a reliable distribution partner.
Load rates and allotments once; make every hotel appear once.
Give buyers an API and smaller agents a B2B portal, with per-buyer markups.
Look-to-book ratio, response time, failed bookings and margin per buyer.
Buyers drop slow or unreliable APIs quickly. Response time and booking success rate matter as much as the rates you offer.
What to ask a bed bank software provider
- Can each buyer have its own markup, product scope and credit terms?
- How are allotments released and stop sales pushed to buyers?
- What API format and documentation do buyers receive?
- How are duplicates mapped when you add aggregated supply?
- What are the costs as your buyer count and booking volume grow?