With an aim to offer greater visibility to its partners and customers, German airline Lufthansa is opening up its API to developers for integrating the direct booking functionality. Through Open booking API, authorised developers can now integrate the sale of airline tickets into their own websites and applications using the Lufthansa Open API interface. According to the company executives, this is being done to accelerate context-based travel offers to consumers.

To implement this technology driven process, Lufthansa partnered with consulting firm Mindtree. “Opening such a core feature to be used by early-stage startups and ventures is a great opportunity and strengthens Lufthansa Group's direct distribution strategy. Together, we have taken another huge step forward in our Open API journey,” stated Reinhard Lanegger, Senior Venture Development Manager, Lufthansa Innovation Hub and Project Lead Lufthansa Open API.

Many travel services use the API interface for functions such as timetabling, flight status and seat maps. By providing access to the airline's booking functionality, external programmers can now leverage flight search, selection, and ticketing data via developer.lufthansa.com to include in their own services and provide an elevated customer experience, said the company.

Mindtree said that it is responsible for managing and supporting the integration of direct booking functionality into the Lufthansa Open API. “APIs have led to rapid, crowdsourced innovation in the travel industry,” said Nalin Vij, SVP & Global Head – Travel, Transportation & Hospitality Group, Mindtree.

Early stage startups, ventures, or those new to air travel, can now leverage the booking functionality for Lufthansa flights from the UK. Lufthansa plans to gradually expand this functionality into more markets, said the German airline.