What does it mean?
The Search Tours API method is used to get a list of tours from a specific channel. We recommend this method if you are building a page which lists products or if you are building a search page. Also can be used for searching (and listing) special offers.
It can be used as a keyword search or as a geographic search (with results ordered by proximity to a geocode) or a combination of both. No parameters are mandatory, so you can just get a list of all the tours without any restrictions.
Paged, returns 75 tours per page by default (maximum 200 tours per page).
Only returns a subset of the information TourCMS holds on each tour, intended to be enough for a listing page. To get the full details on a specific tour (i.e. once a customer has made a selection) call the API method “Show Tour”.
However, if you are importing tours into your own database you should use the API method “List Tours” instead.
In this article we explain how to restrict the results of the API response by using the corresponding parameters.
Call
/p/tours/search - list tours from your connected channels (multichannel)
/c/tours/search - list tours from a single channel informed in the request
Formats
XML
Verb
GET
Where do I find it?
Here you can find the method Search Tours and also an example in our TourCMS API documentation.
What should I do?
As mentioned above, there are a few parameters that could be used to restrict the list of results.
Parameters for agents and tour operators:
PARAMETER |
NOTES |
tour_id not_tour_id |
Limit the results to a set list of Tours by passing in a list of IDs (or exclude by using not_tour_id). Perhaps useful if presenting a list of the alternative tours returned by Tour Show with more detail than returned directly by that API.
tour_id=10 (Tour ID 10 only) tour_id=10,12,15 (Tour IDs 10, 12 and 15 only)
NB: Only works if searching in a specific Channel (e.g. an Operator/Supplier on their own site, or an Agent listing Tours from a certain Channel). Use channel_id_tour_id is the solution to limit to specific tour IDs over multiple channels. |
channel_id_tour_id not_channel_id_tour_id |
Limit the results to a set list of Channels/Tours by passing in a list of IDs (or exclude by using not_channel_id_tour_id). Perhaps useful if presenting a list of the alternative tours returned by Tour Show with more detail than returned directly by that API.
channel_id_tour_id=10_8 (Tour ID 8, from Channel ID 10 only) channel_id_tour_id=10_8,10_100,10_101 (Tour IDs 8, 100, 101 only, from Channel ID 10 only) |
booking_style |
Set to booking to only return Tours from Channels (Operators) that take confirmed online bookings (e.g. will ignore Tours from any Channels who take online "bookings" as an Enquiry or Quotation stage of the process) |
k |
Keyword - matches against Tour name, Location, Short description, Summary, Tour code |
k2 |
Keyword #2 (When used with k will be OR) |
k3 |
Keyword #3 (When used with k and k2 will be OR) |
k_type |
Set k_type=AND to make k, k2, k3 work as an AND (default is OR) |
location |
Search by "Primary location" text field (Part matches permitted) |
lat |
Latitude of search point |
long |
Longitude of search point |
geo_type |
Set to end to search tour end point. By default will search tour start point |
geo_unit |
Set to km to set unit for proximity search to kilometres. By default will be miles |
geo_distance |
Define distance for proximity search. Default 50 |
has_sale |
By default will only return tours that have at least one bookable date in the future. Set to all to return all tours |
has_offer |
Set to 1 to return just tours with special offers / deals available.
Combine with start_date_start and start_date_end to return tours with special offers available during a certain range of start dates, e.g. Christmas offers or School holiday offers. |
has_sale_month |
e.g. has_sale_month=1,2 to return products with something on sale EITHER in January OR February. Can be multiple or just a single month. Use this to create a basic availability search |
404_tour_url |
TourCMS checks the Product page URLs stored for each tour accessible via the API, by default only products with working Product page URLs will be returned.
Set this parameter to override that behaviour:
error - Return just those tours that are returning errors, handy if you are a tour operator / supplier and want to fix your URLs. all - Return all tours, regardless of whether their Product page URL is returning an error or not. Handy if you are building an entirely API driven website, or perhaps a mobile app, and have no need to link through to the supplier website for full details. |
start_date |
Check availability on a specific date, date format YYYY-MM-DD |
start_date_start start_date_end |
Check availability on a range of start dates, date format YYYY-MM-DD |
between_date_start between_date_end |
Check availability where start date is after between_date_start and end date is before between_date_end, date format YYYY-MM-DD.
Only use this when dealing with searches for multi-day product that starts and ends between a pair of dates, otherwise use start_date_start and start_date_end |
duration_min duration_max |
Search by tour duration (Days) |
price_range_min |
Minimum "From" price. Defaults to USD, use price_range_currency to specify a different currency to base ranged search on. |
price_range_max |
Maximum "From" price. Defaults to USD, use price_range_currency to specify a different currency to base ranged search on. |
price_range_currency |
Currency to base min/max price range searches on, defaults to USD.
TourCMS will return prices in their original currency, however internally all prices plus the min/max range are converted to USD (using exchange rates from multiple sources) for range and ordering purposes. Due to this conversion, actual ranges may vary slightly |
min_priority |
Minimum commercial priority. Set to medium to return either Medium or High priority tours, set to high to return only High priority tours only - perhaps to build a "Featured Tours". |
country |
Search by country - two letter ISO country code |
not_country |
EXCLUDE results featuring this country - two letter ISO country code |
not_accom |
Set to 1 to EXCLUDE tour that include accommodation (Product types 1 & 3) Handy if you are featuring tours / activities on a hotel website |
accom |
Set to 1 to ONLY RETURN products that include accommodation (Product types 1 & 3) Handy if you are featuring hotels on a tour/activity website |
accomrating |
Search by accommodation rating - comma separated list e.g. to just search for comfortable/basic products search for accomrating=4,5 |
product_type |
Search by product type - comma separated list e.g. to just search for products with accommodation search for product_type=1,3. List of possible types For transfers/transport (product_type 2), you can search by airport code by searching airport_code=LGW e.g. product_type=2&airport_code=LGW |
grade |
Search by grade - comma separated list e.g. to just search for extreme/challenging products search for grade=4,5 |
tourleader_type |
Search by tour leader type - comma separated list e.g. to just search for Independent / self drives search for tourleader_type=2 |
suitable_for_solo |
Find Tours suitable for solo travellers (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for solo travellers (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_couples |
Find Tours suitable for couples (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for couples (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_children |
Find Tours suitable for children (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for children (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_groups |
Find Tours suitable for groups (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for solo travellers (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_students |
Find Tours suitable for students (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for students (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_business |
Find Tours suitable for business travellers (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for business travellers (by setting to 0) |
suitable_for_wheelchairs |
Find Tours suitable for wheelchairs (by setting to 1) or NOT suitable for wheelchairs (by setting to 0)
The seven suitable_for_ fields are new to TourCMS and may not be fully populated by all Channels (Tour Operators) yet, thus they may not be reliable currently. They will be made mandatory shortly at which point they can be relied on. |
currency |
Search by currency - three letter upper case currency code (USD / EUR / GBP etc) (Only bring back products selling in a particular currency. This is a filter to reduce products shown not an application of an exchange rate) |
lang |
Language that the tour description is loaded in. By default will return all products. If you just want tours loaded in the English language set to en |
lang_spoken |
Languages spoken on the tour. Most commonly loaded for attractions that have audio guides or operate specific language groups.
This is a relatively new field and not all tours will have it configured. Generally speaking we would not rely on using this search parameter currently, instead you may wish to just display the languages spoken where returned. |
video_service |
Optionally search for only tours that have a video, or have a video hosted by a particular service.
By default TourCMS will return all tours regardless of whether they have video or not, override this by passing:
all - Just tours with videos (hosted anywhere) vimeo - Just tours with videos hosted by Vimeo youtube - Just tours with videos hosted by YouTube |
order |
Default orderBy default the results are returned in descending commercial priority followed by tour performance order, next bookable date order, "display points" value and finally alphabetically by tour name.
If carrying out a proximity search the default ordering will by distance to the search point, closest first. To set back to the regular default order for proximity search results, set order=comm Overriding the default orderAlphabetical: Set order=tour_name
Commercial priority [Default]: Set order=comm
Departure date: Set order=date_soonest to order by nearest bookable date (ideal if you have a list of events and you want to show in date order). Please note that if you are searching for tours available within a date range that this is the overall next bookable date and NOT the next bookable date within a supplied date range
Display points: Set order=display_points_up or order=display_points_down to order by the "Display points" field in the Tour setup page. display_points_up orders by the lowest number first, which matches the instructions in the TourCMS UI. Possibly useful for Tour Operators use on their own website, likely of little use to Agents.
Duration: Set order=duration_up or order=duration_down
Price: Set order=price_up or order=price_down. For Agents searching across multiple Channels the currencies in use may vary, TourCMS internally converts all prices to USD for ordering purposes (but does not expose the calculated USD price anywhere).
Special offer: To order by the most recently created special offers set to order=offer_recent, for tours with offers starting soonest then set to order=offer_soonest (use this for a "Late deals" type page).
Tour creation date: Set order=created_recent to order by most recently created first (similar to a blog posting style where on a blog tend to show most recent blog posts first) |
qc |
Enable/disable "Quality control". Quality control can be switched on/off (default is off) within the Agent control panel and also overridden using this querystring parameter. Note: This setting has no impact when a tour operator uses this API method on their own website.
Quality control explanation: If you are a web affiliate sending traffic through to the suppliers website then turn qc=on to only return tours where TourCMS is confident web tracking of bookings is in place. If - rather than sending traffic to the suppliers website - you are using the API to input web bookings or enquiries then you don't need to worry about leakage via insufficient web tracking, hence can leave the quality control off. Also ensures tours meet certain image and description length criteria. |
per_page |
Number of results to return per page. Default is 75. Max is 200 |
page |
Integer for which page number to return. Default is page 1 |
Apart from the previous list, tour operators could also use the following parameters:
Category / ANDcategory / ORcategory/ NOTcategory
Tour Operators / Suppliers can define product Categories to aid grouping their products into Product filters (collections) for internal use in reporting, or for grouping products on their website.
Example Categories might include "Activity type" (with possible values of "Rafting", "Mountain Biking", "Hiking") or for Hotel type products you might have "Accommodation rating" (with possible values of "5 Star", "3 Star" or "Boutique").
There are three parameters that can be used to search these. If searching just a single category then any of the parameters can be used, however the most logical would be category, e.g to search for Rafting use the following...
category=Rafting
...to search for either Rafting OR Hiking...
ORcategory=Rafting|Hiking
...to search for Tours that contain both Rafting AND Hiking...
ANDcategory=Rafting|Hiking
NOTcategory, can be used to tell TourCMS which products to exclude from the results,for example to search for all products that feature Rafting but not Hiking....
category=Rafting&NOTcategory=Hiking