
Duffel (YC S18) raises $30M for flight booking API - mattmarcus
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/28/duffel-raises-30m-led-by-index-ventures-to-disintermediate-legacy-travel-platforms/
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legohorizons
In a world where consumer spend is going to be shrinking amidst an upcoming
downturn and consumer CAC going through the rough "vertical enterprise
software" is going to be the next megatrend.

Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a
better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software
solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

~~~
mbesto
> Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a
> better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software
> solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

I could enumerate 100's of these problems, but this really isn't the right
question to ask. The only reason this startup is possible is because the IATA
allowed them to be. So perhaps the question should be "how many industries are
ready to standardize their communication protocols via modern APIs?"

Great example - providing a unified banking API is clearly a multi-billion
dollar a year business. But it requires the network effect of all of the banks
to be involved. This either happens via industry groups or via regulation.

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Spinosaurus
> banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business

Why?

AFAIK most big banks have APIs, and it would seem to me the use cases for
needing to access an account programmatically are few.

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mbesto
1\. Most big banks require a ton of red tape to use those APIs. Even if you're
using modern technology with a top tier dev team, this is still a 4-6 week
endeavor at its absolute quickest turnaround.

2\. All ACH transfers, for example, have to clear the Fed, which is done via
FTP.

3\. The consumer use cases are endless (make payments, analytics, etc). Just
look at Mint, Truebill, etc.

4\. The commercial user cases are endless (treasury management, AP, AR, etc).

~~~
stevedomin
(Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Duffel) Totally agree with your point above re:
IATA. They made it possible but for a different reason, they opened the door
to competition.

Standardisation of communication protocol can only do so much, especially when
the standard is built to accommodate the needs of 100s of airlines using 100s
of different host systems.

Also, there is ton of red tape around airlines' APIs as well, I'd say probably
as much as in banking.

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the_watcher
Is this aimed at the existing travel agent industry or at _an entirely new
class of travel professional_? If it's the latter, I'm pretty excited about
this. I have several friends who I've leaned on for helping with travel plans
(who essentially acted as my API for international travel). I could see plenty
of businesses created out of this - imagine turning a travel blogger into a
travel planner with minimal additional effort on the part of the blogger.
Airline points writers would also seem to be an ideal user of a suite like
this.

~~~
stevedomin
THIS THIS THIS!

Exactly what excited us about building Duffel in the first place. (After we
struggled to get access to a decent travel booking API ourselves).

We want to give everyone the opportunity to sell travel products, anywhere.

~~~
the_watcher
Glad to hear that! I have one friend who has built a reasonably successful
luxury travel business, but I have at least 5 others who are functionally free
APIs for their friends. I would love to see this as an emergent specialty
space - imagine if a frequent traveller like the ones I'm referring to could
plan their trips, but also easily create them to share and sell to others.

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jmarbach
Amadeus offers an easy-to-use and affordable flight booking API too:
[https://developers.amadeus.com/self-
service/category/air/api...](https://developers.amadeus.com/self-
service/category/air/api-doc/flight-create-orders)

What's new here that Amadeus or Sabre do not offer?

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whymsicalburito
I had to build a hotel booking platform on Amadeus a few years ago and it was
a nightmare to work with their API. It would frequently break or start
returning differently formatted responses. Also the support was so bad, I felt
like I was the first developer the reps had ever spoken with. I hope a
newcomer can unseat the incumbents in this space, it's badly needed!

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verst
While we are innovating in this space, perhaps it's time to address IATA's PNR
(passenger Name record) Standard that is used by Sabre and Amadeus. Plenty of
privacy issues in that old system.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Privac...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record#Privacy_concerns)

~~~
namdnay
The PNR is a bit of a nightmare, but you have to keep in mind that the PNR
itself and the interfaces to manipulate and transfer it have been backwards
compatible since the mid-70s. The PNR won't go away soon, however what is
important is to move it away from the end user (whether traveller or agent)
and relegate it to a low-level data format. Using PNR+last name as a form of
"secure" identification is crazy for example.

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jpalomaki
Pretty exciting! Some time ago I was checking the available APIs for searching
flight information. I was quite surprised to find out there wasn’t anything
suitable for starting small.

API with a reasonable pay-as-you-go plan would enable innovation on this
space.

Despite all the effort from different companies the searching/booking
experience still does not feel ”enjoyable”.

~~~
noodle
Agreed. I had a side project I wanted to work on a few months back, and had to
icebox the idea because the current flight related APIs are not great, and
access is geared towards larger, established companies.

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dewey
I emailed some travel related API providers for a side project a while ago and
they happily offered me a cheaper price than the listed one once I explained
what it's for.

Never hurts to give it a try.

~~~
noodle
I did in fact try, and was rejected either immediately or after a few weeks of
reviewing my request.

IIRC one provider did let me in, but it didn't have the functionality I
needed.

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tonixie
Can someone explain how Duffel is different than the google flights API?

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stevedomin
Are you referring to QPX?

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Yuval_Halevi
Congrats.

I went to their site. Too bad there is no blog or any content there beside the
homepage. Hope they will create it soon.

A large portion of that $30M will go to PPC campaigns probably, instead of
building a solid SEO structure that gives real value to their target audience
and creates a solid brand.

~~~
stevedomin
More content coming soon - there is tons of stuff we want to share about the
industry.

Definitely not planning to spend a large portion of that $30M on PPC, maybe
just $25M _.

_ joking!

~~~
rvnx
Are you calling Sabre / Amadeus APIs in the background "for now" ?

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stevedomin
Nope, no GDS at all

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jbob2000
They’re integrating with Airlines’ booking systems directly. This will work
until you become so big that the airlines feel threatened by you, at which
point they’ll cut the API access and implement whatever idea you were working
on.

That’s how my bank operates! You can use our API but we reserve the right to
shut off access at any time for any reason. Oh look, your customers love this
feature you just added? Gee, we need to close your API access for _reasons_.
Oh look we just added this great new feature to our app, don’t you love it?

