9 min read
Travel Aggregator: Real-time Price Monitoring
How a leading travel platform monitors 3M+ prices daily across airlines, hotels, and car rentals with 99.9% accuracy.
Company Background
Our client is a top-5 global travel aggregator serving 25+ million users annually across 180 countries. Their platform compares prices from:
450+
Airlines
500K+
Hotels
150+
Car Rental
180
Countries
The Challenge
Travel prices change every 30 seconds on average. Missing price updates meant losing customers to competitors.
Critical Business Requirements
Real-time accuracy:
Prices must be updated within 5 minutes of supplier changesComprehensive coverage:
Monitor all routes, dates, and room types across 200+ suppliersHigh availability:
99.99% uptime requirement for price monitoringCost efficiency:
Reduce API costs from direct supplier connections
Technical Obstacles
CAPTCHA Complexity
- 15+ different CAPTCHA types
- Regional variations (Asia, EU, Americas)
- Dynamic CAPTCHA loading
- Multi-step verifications
Scale Challenges
- 3M+ price checks daily
- Peak loads during booking seasons
- Supplier rate limiting
- Geographic distribution needs
Solution Implementation
Architecture Overview
Data Collection Layer
Distributed crawlers across 12 AWS regions with intelligent routing
CAPTCHA Processing
AI4CAP.COM Enterprise API with custom integration for travel-specific CAPTCHAs
Data Pipeline
Apache Kafka streams with real-time deduplication and validation
Price Engine
Redis-backed caching with sub-second query response times
Smart CAPTCHA Handling
Detection & Classification
98% automatic CAPTCHA type detection
- ML-based CAPTCHA classifier
- Supplier-specific handlers
- Dynamic selector updates
Solving Pipeline
99.7% solving accuracy
- Parallel processing queues
- Intelligent retry logic
- Regional endpoint routing
Results & Performance
- Price Update Speed
- 3.2 min ↓
- From 45 minutes
- Coverage Increase
- +340% ↑
- More routes/dates
- Cost Reduction
- 68% ↓
- vs API costs
Performance Metrics
Technical Performance
Daily price checks
3.2M
CAPTCHA solve rate
99.7%
System uptime
99.94%
Average latency
1.2s
Business Impact
Conversion rate
+28%
Customer satisfaction
+35%
Revenue per user
+41%
Market share gain
+12%
Customer Experience Improvements
Before Implementation
45-minute price delays
Frequent "price changed" errors
Limited route coverage
Missing discount fares
High cart abandonment
After Implementation
Real-time price accuracy
Guaranteed best prices
All routes & dates covered
Instant fare alerts
Seamless booking flow
Technical Innovations
Predictive CAPTCHA Handling
Developed ML models to predict when CAPTCHAs will appear based on request patterns, reducing solve time by 40%.
Intelligent Request Distribution
Geographic load balancing ensures requests originate from expected regions, reducing CAPTCHA frequency by 60%.
Session Persistence
Advanced session management maintains authenticated states across distributed crawlers, improving efficiency by 35%.
CEO Statement
"Real-time price monitoring transformed our business. We went from catching up with competitors to setting the industry standard. The ROI exceeded 500% in the first year alone."